The Teachings of Silver Birch

By Silver Birch (1938)

TABLE OF CONTENTS “Mary Pickford at a Séance”

3

“Science - Viewed From Beyond”

7

“Does Free Will Exist?”

11

“To Inspire Ambassadors”

16

“Problems of Communication”

20

“Creation Is Infinite”

27

“Who are You?”

36

“Spirit Is Superior”

41

“Do Not Despair”

49

“All Truth Is Wonderful”

57

“Like The Mighty Raging Winds”

63

“As Your Soul Unfolds”

68

“The Epitome of Perfect Love”

74

“The Divine Mission”

77

“The Healing Mission”

82

“Guiding Lights”

90

“What is Death?”

93

“Violence - The Way of Self-pity”

100

“The Enigma of Religion”

109

“Our Lesser Brethren?”

115

“Music of the Spheres”

119

“Why Spirit Guides Return”

122

“Why Were You Born?”

126

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Mary Pickford At A Séance Having recorded a few of the messages given by Silver Birch to various kinds of people, I think I must include Hannen Swaffer’s story of the sitting given by the guide to Mary Pickford, the film star who became known as “the world’s sweetheart.” The journalist wrote: The Silver Birch sitting provided fresh confirmation of what is often stressed when actors and actresses, artists or composers sit - the great importance, from the point of view of the spirit world, of any film, play, composition or work of art that spreads knowledge or inspires large numbers of people. Here, copied from a record of the sitting, are extracts that will be of general interest. Silver Birch: “Now, to the lady who comes from across the water. You know you are much beloved by many who are here today and that for many years in your life you have been conscious of the love that streams towards you from those who have passed through the change which people call death. That is so, is it not?” Mary: “Yes.” Silver Birch: “And this love and this guidance have been realities in your own life, time and time and time again, for whenever difficulties have raised their heads and you have not known where to turn, the guidance of the spirit has shown itself with indisputable clarity and you have gone forward without hesitation to perform the task in front of you. Do I speak clearly?” Mary: “Yes.” Silver Birch: “However, you could become more conscious of the love of the many people who are bound to you by ties of affection. Did you but realize it, the whole pattern of your life is one of great guidance. You have been led step by step all the way. When, if you had known at first what was in front of you, it all would have seemed impossible of attainment, as you have put one foot forward, so the way has been cleared to enable you to put the other foot forward; and so progress has been consistent and has been maintained. You have been of tremendous service because you have striven to radiate that love which has been given to you.

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You may not know all this, though some of it is clear to you. But in our world, a world inhabited by all the souls who are translated here from your plane of activity, we soon learn that the only real religion is service. Service is the coin of the spirit. He or she who strives to serve to the utmost is in turn served by other beings who return, inspired by the attracting force. And, as you have sought through your life to bring happiness and understand the knowledge into the lives of others, so you have attracted to yourself not only your own loved ones, but radiant beings who left the earth many long years ago, and who pour out their accumulated wisdom through your instrumentality. Do you understand all I am saying to you?” Mary: “Yes, I think I do.” Silver Birch: “You are regarded here as an ambassador, one who sees in herself an instrument, a means of reaching large numbers of people, and you have striven to preach this simple gospel of the reality of the invisible, where all strength and power and majesty and might reside. And so it has been throughout the whole of your life that material obstacles have been removed again and again and you have been able to go forward. Now I want to say to you that soon you are to set the seal on your labors; the crown will be placed upon them and you will reach the pinnacle of attainment. All that your heart desires will find fruition in the days that lie before you.” Northcliffe, who invariably discloses his presence at any sitting at which I am present, then gave Mary his greetings. I did not know, but when she and Fairbanks first came to London and they were mobbed everywhere by vast crowds, Northcliffe placed his Surrey home at their disposal as a retreat. Then Fairbanks spoke of his regrets for what had happened at the end of his and Mary’s marriage. I refrain from doing more than mention the fact briefly. “I hold no bitterness against any human being, on earth or off the earth,” said Mary, “only against my own wrong-doing.” “Do not magnify that,” replied Silver Birch. “If the ledger of your life were to be drawn up now, the so-called wrong-doings would be very few compared with all the unselfishness and the service you have rendered. You will never know until you come here how much good you have done for so many people.

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You have brought joy to millions of people. You have enabled them to forget for a while the little sorrows, their cares and aches, their troubles and stresses, and the storms that mean so much to them. In your own way, through your own desire, you have given service, and service is all that matters. When everything else is forgotten and stripped away, when wealth has faded and power has dissolved, when rank and birth are forgotten, when creed lies in the dust, the character you have earned by your life of service will endure for all time. And it is that character shining through your body that I see, and I rejoice in meeting a soul who has done some good. That is what I think about your wrong-doings. There is nothing for you to fear. You can go straight ahead. You wish me to speak frankly?” Mary: “Yes.” Silver Birch: “You do not want to make lots of money. What you want to do is to do the greatest for good that you can. Isn’t that so?” Mary: “Yes.” Silver Birch: “That motive brings its own reward, and the other is automatic. It is given to you for the single purpose of giving you confidence and there is nothing to fear. Have no fear in your heart. Fear disturbs vibrations. You know about vibrations?” Mary: “Yes, I know something about them.” Silver Birch: “Fear disturbs the atmosphere. If your heart is full of unbounded, unremitting confidence, if your soul is full of indomitable resolution because your mind has knowledge of spiritual verities, that cannot fail in a world where all values are changing. Nothing in the world of matter can touch you, the real you, the indestructible, infinite, eternal you. You can go forward with the full knowledge that the power which is behind you, guiding you, upholding you and sustaining you, is the mightiest power in the universe, the power of love that seeks to use you as a greater instrument of service for the Great Spirit of all life, to make known His love and His wisdom, His truth and His knowledge, to those who still know nothing about these things. Sometimes in the silence of your chamber you have shed tears because you think, or you have thought, you have failed. You have not. The road lies

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straight in front of you and the glorious promise of fulfillment will be attained. I hope I have helped you.” Mary: “Thank you very much.” Silver Birch: “No. I never accept thanks. Thanks should be rendered to the Great Spirit, whose servants we all are. I strive to perform this task and I do it with willingness and cheerfulness, and if anything I have said has been of help, then it is because I am going about my Father’s business. Perhaps some time we will meet again and I can be of further service to you. Till then, look up, not down. Remember that light and love stream in abundance from the infinite source, which possesses an infinite storehouse. Fill yourself from that rich, vast treasury. It is yours for the asking. And go on writing.” To the circle, the guide said: “May the power of the spirit remain with you as an inspiring force and may you become increasingly conscious of the gifts with which you have been endowed and, developing them, render service to those less fortunate then yourselves, so that your lives are truly worth while the living.” Then, just before he gave up control of the medium, the guide gave Mary a final message. “Your Mother says I mustn’t go away until she reassures you that her love is undying,” he said, “that she never forgets that which you have done for her and that she is repaying what she considers to be that debt. She would not let me go.”

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Science - Viewed From Beyond NOT since the Victorian era when several noted scientists investigated and attested psychic phenomena, including full-form materializations under test conditions, have spirit gifts been so rigorously placed under the scientific microscope. It is fitting to begin this chapter with a question a scientist put to Silver Birch: “I have read and have always believed that service is very important. What is also important is the occupation of gathering knowledge, namely learning. In the spirit world how is this carried out? In scientific matters of this physical world we do experiments. Does one do experiments in the spirit world, or is it by purely mental processes?” The guide replied: “Knowledge, like the Great Spirit, is infinite; no period can be placed on it. As you progress so you fit yourself for more knowledge. You are forever climbing a mountain, ascending one peak, only to behold another to be scaled. Knowledge, progress, development, unfoldment, advancement, all these are eternal processes. In your physical world you experiment to see what are the results when you try “a” with “b” and so on. We have experiments which are divorced from the physical world, because we are concerned with some of the many and varying expressions of the spirit. So we are always experimenting. Let me give a simple illustration. We have coming to our world doctors who are still concerned with helping afflicted ones on earth. They have knowledge of the mechanism, the workings of the human body and its many reactions. In our world they have access to a different kind of power, some of the degrees of spirit, which is life, and how it can be applied, combined with earthly knowledge, to help the sick in your world. This is a constant experimentation involving the mixture of forces. They must not be too strong, otherwise they will harm the instrument through whom they are to be poured. They can be increased in intensity as the human channel is more receptive and can bear the higher velocity, or power, whichever word you want to use. There is the difficulty again of finding words that can adequately express what is really beyond language. So we are constantly engaged in experiments, adding to our knowledge all the time.” At later circles came these answers to questions.

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“The scientific picture of the universe a century ago is vastly different from the one today.” Does this mean that scientists will move away from this materialistic research to a higher level? “It will be forced on them by the logic of their own researches as they inevitably inquire into the world of the invisible and its vast untapped potential. As they develop spiritually they will realize how this tremendous force can be harnessed for good. Then they will pay increasing attention to the development of these faculties within themselves. What is without is but an expression of what is within. The life force is indivisible. You cannot cut it up into watertight compartments. The life in the atom is in essence the same life as in the human, the animal, the flower or the tree. It is all the one life with its infinite manifestations.” Have scientists come to that level of understanding? “No, but some have. Olive Lodge is a good example of a spiritual scientist with an awareness of states of reality existing beyond the surface.” Do you think scientists will destroy too many people and too much before they come to an awareness? “No there is a limitation to what scientists can do. They cannot destroy the whole of your world. The natural laws will ensure the damage that can be done in your world is not so fearful as some people think. Besides, the law of the Great Spirit in the ultimate must prevail. There are no men in your world who can thwart it. They can delay, they can hinder, but they cannot override the Great Spirit. Those of us who have some insight into the mechanics and the operation of natural law remain confident that, come what may, however foolish people in your world may be, the Great Spirit will prevail. And the Great Spirit’s laws will ensure that more and more love, compassion, charity and service will be exercised in your world. Science is not infallible. Scientists are only human beings who can make mistakes. I do not worship the god of science. The world will not come to an end, as they say, it will continue. Are you familiar with scientists’ pronouncements that have been wrong?” I should explain that I have had to study this question very closely, though I am not a scientist.

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Silver Birch repeated his question. “Are you familiar with scientists’ pronouncements that have been wrong?” Very many. “So there is no guarantee that any scientific pronouncement must automatically be right when it concerns the future.” In greeting a scientist from Rhodesia, the guide said: “Your footsteps have been guided so that you have been brought out of the darkness into the light. This is part of the process by which all true human development is achieved because of the law of compensation, as low as you can fall so correspondingly high can you rise. It is in darkness that you find the light, it is in sorrow that you find joy. It is when it seems that earth has nothing to offer that the spirit can begin to find itself. This is part of the polarity, the means by which the soul begins to come into its own. In the vast order of universal activity every facet of being has its ordered part to play. Storm is as essential as sunshine, darkness as light. It is in the crucible of suffering that strength is forged. It is only when extremes are reached that growth begins to be achieved. I am not trying to talk in paradoxes, but this is how the Great Spirit, with infinite wisdom, has fashioned the laws of progress so far as humans are concerned. But it is just as true that whatever is needed is presented when the time is ripe. The difficulties, trials, tests, obstacles, these are all essential precursors to the soul being able to express its latent gifts. They provide the equivalent to the catalyst. If you look back you can see how, in the time of what seemed the greatest difficulty, you were shown the way, your footsteps directed so that you could begin to learn how to fulfill yourself. There will be opportunities for you to help others as you have been helped by people who trod a similar path before you. This is how the divine scheme comes into action, to bring people, one by one, into possession of eternal truths that will help them to express themselves to the fullest, to serve all who come within their orbit, to deny none who seek their aid and to be sorry for those who are given the chance to achieve self-regeneration and lose it because it would seem they are not ready. So rejoice at what has been revealed to you and realize that it is only an infinitesimal fraction of what awaits you. There are tremendous spiritual treasures still to be excavated. You will have many opportunities of service.”

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At another circle Silver Birch said: “We are at work the whole time, experimenting with new forms and ideas, particularly in healing, clairvoyance and trance so as to improve the quality. But we are dependent on the material you offer us. This is the measure of your free will and personal responsibility. We will always give more than we receive from you. That is our duty, to support, to sustain and to ensure that all your fundamental, essential needs will be supplied. The rest is up to you. We require instruments who will be dedicated to serve. I’ve said it before, and I will repeat, service is the coin of the spirit. To serve is noble because in service you are expressing the divinity within you. What we ask you to do is to raise your standards as high as you can. We will always work to get you to advance slowly but surely towards the goal of achievement. What we say to you is very simple. Do the best you can, and together we will be able to help those who come to us.”

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Does Free Will Exist? The question of free will is one that has dogged man through the centuries. Can we change the course of our lives? Do we have absolute or partial free will? Silver Birch always welcomes difficult questions. Since some regard free will as a thorny problem, it is apposite to devote a chapter to it. Answering a visitor, the guide said: “It is part of the complementary aspect of the law that man and woman help to make the whole. Intuition can help where reason cannot give the answer. You are being given an opportunity to fulfill yourselves. You have free will. You may make your choice. Life is not chance, accident or even coincidence. The whole of life is governed by immutable natural law. Whatever aspect of being you examine, it is due to natural law. Human beings are not outside the operation of natural law. They are integral parts of it. The law has operated at a time when you have a choice to make. It is for you to make that choice. You have been led by those who love you. It is love that directs your footsteps. And that love is capable of guiding you if you will allow it to do so. Love, like life, is indestructible. The things of matter must perish because by their very nature they are ephemeral. The things of the spirit are eternal. Love is a quality of the spirit. Love endures, love survives, love, as your Bible says, is the fulfilling of the law.” “Do all the paths lead to the same place, or do they lead nowhere?” the guide was asked. “The word “place” is difficult. If I might put it my way, all paths lead to the one great divine source of creation. The Great Spirit, what you call “God,” is infinite. So there must be an infinite number of paths leading to the Great Spirit, the epitome of perfect love and wisdom. The Great Spirit is life, and life is spirit. All that is endowed with life has the quality of divinity as part of its heritage of birth. And all the beings who inhabit your planet are engaged on an eternal pilgrimage, pursuing paths that must lead in the ultimate to the one divine goal.

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It does not matter what the path is as long as the pilgrim treads it with honesty of purpose, sincerely seeking to fulfill himself, acquit himself and express those gifts with which he has been endowed so that others can be enriched for his presence on earth.” “Many young people today are wondering if this planet will survive for very long because of what man is doing to it.” “The planet will survive.” “Will man?” “Yes, man will survive too. There is a limitation placed by natural law on what man can do to the planet on which he lives. He cannot destroy the whole of the planet and all that it contains. Now this is part of man’s free will, his choice as to whether he will rise to the divinity within him or whether he will fail. In that case he will not fulfill himself. He will pass to our world unequipped and unready and have to learn all over again. No man, and no combination of men, have the power to thwart divine will. They can delay, they can harass and they can impede. Infinite wisdom and love rule the universe. These will prevail because that is the law.” Here the visitor said: “We have destroyed many things which can never return to what they were. This applies to much of what was in the ground and it is a limited place that we inhabit.” “But it has tremendous potentialities. There is much to be revealed in your world, much to be discovered. You are not at the end of evolution. You are still in its early stages. Those who are familiar with the truths of the spirit never despair. Their optimum is based on the knowledge that has been revealed to them. With that knowledge they can have complete faith in the overriding power. In its long history your world has had many disasters. Man has survived them. Man has progressed in spite of himself. He will continue to evolve because evolution is part of the natural law. And spiritual evolution is part of that same law.” At another circle meeting came the question, “How far is free will dependent on karma, for example?” The reply was: “The whole of life is regulated by natural laws. Nothing is left to freakishness, to miracles or to chance. All is cause and effect, sowing and reaping, otherwise the universe would be chaotic. You have evidence of the - 12 -

infinite plan of an infinite intelligence in the operation of natural laws wherever you look. It is to be seen in the sequence of the seasons, the movement of planets and galaxies, the ebb and flow of tides, the growth of a myriad forms of floral life, where natural law reigns supreme. So there is the limit which the divine power has placed because nothing can occur beyond the framework of natural law. But there are laws within laws. There are not only physical laws, there are mental and spiritual ones. You live, you breathe, you exist, you have your being because from the moment of conception spirit begins to associate with matter in individual form and gradually that individuality unfolds. It is part of the plan that you should have an element of free will, the power and the ability to make choices in certain circumstances. Used for its best and highest, you can play your part in the spiritual unfoldment and evolution of the race, the world, the universe and the cosmos because your spirit is part of the Great Spirit. You share in the divinity that is responsible for all that exists everywhere. You are the Great Spirit in microcosm. All that the Great Spirit has of that infinity you have and you will have eternity in which to unfold it. You can wake up tomorrow morning at an hour later or earlier, or you can stay in bed if you like. You can go for a walk or drive a car. You can lose your temper and hope to find it again. There is a variety of things you can do for which you have the free will. But you cannot stop the sun from shining, you cannot halt the tempest; these are beyond your power. Your free will is limited because your choice is restricted. There is another limitation placed on your free will. It is the mental and spiritual stage which you have reached in your development. You are free to kill, but your character will ensure that you refrain. So even when you have choices these are limited by who and what you are at the time. Like many things in the universe you have a paradox. You have free will within limitation all the time. Now I must go a stage further because you introduced the question of karma. This too is a very important consideration because many of those who have work to do in your world chose to do it beforehand. Though awareness may not come immediately, the choice imposes another restriction in free will.” “Our consciences, are they really ours or those of the guides because they are connected with free will?” - 13 -

“You are receiving and transmitting stations. It is very seldom that you construct your own thoughts. You radio and television have channels, vibrations -- frequencies is the right word - to which they can be attuned. So you have your frequency. That enables you to receive thoughts, ideas, suggestions, inspiration, guidance and a variety of ideas from those on your wavelengths. As you receive them they are tinctured with your individuality and sent on their way so that others capture them. All this is determined by your evolution. The higher spiritually you are evolved the greater is the thought that can reach you. And, because of that, the greater will its effect be as you transmit it and send it on its way.” When the subject was raised again, the guide replied: “Nobody has perfect free will. It is free will within a restricted range. Your will is subject to circumstances which you cannot control. The soul knows what it has to achieve. It may take a long time for awareness to dawn. I cannot change human nature. It is very malleable material. It can respond to the highest and pitifully can fall to the lowest. This is the great purpose of earthly incarnation. You have within you all the divine possibilities. You have a physical body that comes from the earth, but its animation is derived from this vitalizing spirit. You have the choice as to how you order your existence, as to whether you give priority to spirit or to matter. That is the nature of the human problem. But you must help those who come to you wherever you can. When you cannot, leave them. For all who are brought to you it is their opportunity to find themselves. If they succeed, express gratitude for your chance to serve. But if they fail, feel sorry for them.” When another visitor asked about free will, Silver Birch took the opportunity to explain about its relationship to time. The question was direct. “How does free will operate?” The woman guest explained her interest “arose from something I read in Two Worlds where you refer to time as being the eternal present.” She added: “If I look back through my life I can see all the intersections, decisions I made, the operation of cause and effect, the whole chain. Supposing I had the gift of looking into the future. I should see what is lined up for me. But if that is the case, where does my free will come in?” The guide replied: “Forgive me for saying this, but you are a little confused. Time is the eternal present. It is not past or future. It is your relationship to time that determines - 14 -

your past and future. If you visualize time -- this is very hard to convey -- as a circle which is constantly moving round, the point where you touch it is what you call your present. The part where you have touched it is what you call your past. The part you have yet to touch is what you call your future. But so far as time is concerned it has no past or future. What you call “looking into the future” is only that ability through clairvoyance or attunement when you escape the three-dimensional boundaries of the physical world and see what will be your future. You behold the effect of the cause you put into motion, what your free will has created. But this does not affect time itself, only your relation to it.”

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To Inspire Ambassadors For most of the delegates at this large meeting of the Commonwealth of churches connected with the Spiritualist Association of Great Britain, held in its Belgrave Square headquarters, it was their first chance of hearing Silver Birch. He readily accepted the invitation to address them. After a typical invocation he told them: “I am very happy to come amongst you and to bring you my love and greetings from the world of spirit. I would like you to feel that we are not strangers to one another, but that we are comrades actuated by the same motive of helping wherever we can and playing our part to bring spiritual, mental and physical freedom to all who come within our orbit. I would also like to say just a few words which perhaps may be of some encouragement to all of you who are channels, instruments, dispensers of the power of the spirit which produces in its train such vivifying effects. Then I would like you to appreciate that none of you is ever alone, overlooked, neglected or forgotten. You have made yourselves accessible to the sublime power of the spirit, which is the mightiest force in the boundless universe. It is the power of life itself. That is why, for example, in your healings you are able to obtain results where other means have failed. You enable the life force to produce its rejuvenating effect on the life force of the sufferer you are helping. You are all privileged to be ambassadors of the Great Spirit. You are representatives of the Great Spirit wherever you labor. It becomes your charge and responsibility to see that your gifts are used in such a fashion that they produce the maximum good wherever you can. There will be brought to you those whom you can help. They will often be pitiful derelicts, sick, ill, worried, cheerless, full of problems, feeling that life on earth has nothing more to offer them. It becomes your privilege to help them to become aware of themselves, of their true nature, of their inner spirit, the gift of divinity conferred at birth, so that they begin to get a realization of how they should order their lives and derive from them the fullness, richness, beauty, splendor and radiance that should be theirs. That is your function, to make the power of the spirit available to all who come to you. It is the reason why you have buildings, churches, temples and - 16 -

societies, so that you are accessible. And accessibility is the reason for the existence of all your organizations. I want you to appreciate that so far as we are concerned, if you help one soul to find itself, to become aware of its latent divinity and to begin to express it, then the whole of your earth life is well worth while. But you will be able to help more than one. You will be able, as a result, to perform this unique service that no others in your world can possibly give because they have made themselves inaccessible to the power of the spirit which is the life-giving essence for the whole cosmos in which we all dwell. Do not worry if any come to you and after you have done your best you are unable to help them. They have had their chance. You must be sorry because they have not taken it. What you must realize is that until their soul is touched, until they are spiritually ready, there is nothing you can do to help them. What will produce this preparation is not always easy to understand. It may be an illness. It may be a crisis. It may be anything which brings them to the lowest depths of despair, when they feel there is nothing in the whole of the material world that can produce the answer. Then they should begin to come into their own and you should be able to kindle the divine spark so that it can begin to grow into a lambent flame. That is why you exist in your churches, societies and organizations. I must also say this. Because of what you are, because this tremendous power, divine in origin flows through you, yours is the greater responsibility to see that you do nothing that in any way lessens the trust that is reposed in you. We are not dictators. We are not your masters. We do not regard you as marionettes who have to dance when the strings are pulled in our world. You are our co-operators. We want to work together. We will always provide whatever is spiritually necessary according to the conditions available at the time. We will lead. We will guide. We will direct. We will help, but we will not order. We will not compel and we will not dictate. If you hear, supposedly emanating from our life, entities who command you to do this, that and the other, you can be sure that their spiritual status is not very evolved. Cooperation is the law of the spirit. We would win you with love, with common sense and with reason. We would offer you nothing that is an insult to your intelligence or would make your reason revolt. Together we can help the Great Spirit in the eternal processes of evolution and creation. This is the task on which we are all engaged. This is the opportunity given to all of us to help the Great Spirit so that His children may live a richer, fuller life

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and not waste all the opportunities earth provides in obtaining the equipment that is necessary when people come to our side of being. We get too many misfits, too many ill-equipped, too many derelicts who are unready. It is easier for their education to begin in your world than it is in ours. So be aware of the tremendous possibilities that lie within you. Be aware of the great opportunities that you have for service. Do the best you can and then you will be fulfilling the purpose for which you came into your world.” Two years later the guide addressed the Council of Spiritualists, which was then composed of the Greater World Association of Great Britain, Spiritualists’ National Union and the Union of Spiritualist Mediums. Among his comments were: “Wherever there are human beings there are difficulties and problems, because you are imperfect beings living in an imperfect world. If you were perfect you would not be on earth. You would have joined the apex of divinity which is the great spirit of life. You must expect troubles, difficulties, problems, pitfalls and differences of opinion because you are very human. But if you have compassion, if you are prepared to co-operate, to be democratic, to sink self and let the good of the many prevail, then you will come through. And we will always help you. The trouble is that there are too many people - I am not referring to your council -who are more concerned with themselves than with others. These are the stumbling blocks in the promulgation of any truth. We are always on the look-out for means of ensuring that spirit truths and power should advance in increasing measure. We bring together, wherever we can, those who can help to ensure that the spirit plan goes forward. It is not an easy task because the manipulation of matter from our world is very difficult and involves many problems. We have to work with very delicate and subtle vibrations which can be easily nullified by foolish actions in your world. If you will co-operate with us, and forgive my saying this because I mean it most kindly, not demand, but be prepared to receive, you will find that in this atmosphere we can accomplish much together. It is always desirable to have unity in diversity, but not to try to achieve uniformity. You can unite on the fundamentals on which you all agree. There must always be differences of opinion because all the individuals within the ranks of what you might loosely call the Spiritualist movement are at different stages of spiritual and mental growth and evolution. They cannot think alike. Some of you are perhaps already familiar with the fact that you have discarded views, beliefs and opinions that you held dearly in years gone by - 18 -

because a greater understanding has brought you a different perspective. And so the great necessity is for toleration. Brotherhood does not mean that you will all agree. It means that you recognize brotherhood in spite of your diversities. That is the only way I can put it. You must try to achieve the ideal. You may not succeed in doing so 100 per cent. Go on trying to enlist others, because co-operation is part of the law governing the universe. You should always strive to achieve it among yourselves. After all, basically you are agreed on the prime facts. There are differences of interpretation. Respect one another’s viewpoints and combine on what you can agree. This is not easy. But I always say that generals must not expect to be given easy battles to fight.”

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Problems of Communication Seldom, if ever, is a communicator able to impart the totality of his communication. It is possible only in exceptional circumstances. It is not as if you are making a communication on one surface of being like a telephone. Even that goes wrong many times; when lines are crossed, the machinery gets out of order and sometimes will not work at all. If you have these difficulties in communication on one surface of being, realize how much more difficult it is when you have two entirely different states of being. You have to make vocal what begins as an image, a thought or an idea in the mind of the communicator. With a trance medium control is never one hundred per cent effective. The instrument is a human being. Control varies according to the guide’s success, partial success, or failure in blending with the medium’s aura. The guide takes possession through the subconscious mind and all the bodily processes that are controlled by it. Whilst doing so, he must transmit, if possible, the original image, thought, picture or idea that comes from the communicator. The medium can be tired, ill, out of sorts, badtempered, hungry, had too much to eat, to drink, to smoke, a thousand and one things; all can effect the closeness with which guide and instrument should blend. There may be subconscious ideas in the mind of the medium, strong, dominant, which keep on thrusting their tentacles because they are trying to find expression. Often the only way to get rid of them is to express them and make them null. That explains sometimes why you get the medium’s subconscious ideas expressed by a guide. Sometimes the guide cannot help himself and is carried away by the onrush, the force of the subconscious promptings. Fog is bad, so is humidity. A cold, clear, crisp, electrical atmosphere is the best. It is not easy. It requires much effort to return to your world. That is why the only ones prepared to make the efforts are those who love you. Love is the impelling motive for comforting, guiding, helping those to whom it is naturally and willingly bound. As long as people die, and they love those who are left on earth, they will willingly break through every barrier and overcome every obstacle to reach the one they love. That provides part of the impetus behind the whole of communication from our world. Be tolerant. Do not blame the medium. Do not necessarily blame the guide. We do our best with the material at our disposal. To accomplish in trance,

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what is being accomplished now, requires a stepping-down process, the use of a transformer. That involves a sacrifice of the true individuality to a large extent, as you can appreciate. When you have to make it material you go one stage further. You have to materialize the spirit to have almost a complete reversal of vibration from the subtle, quick and delicate to the slow, heavy and ponderous. That, of course, also means another sacrifice of the whole individuality. Then, again, there are subtle deviations of ectoplasm, according to the mental and spiritual qualities of the human instrument. Not all ectoplasm is the same because its basic foundation is extracted from the medium. The grosser the instrument, the less refined, the less mentally and spiritually evolved is the ectoplasm. Where you have a refined soul, mentally and spiritually, those qualities are reflected in the ectoplasm. It does not follow that every person who desires to communicate in our world is able to do so, or, given an opportunity, is able to transmit the fullness of the message. It depends on the individual. A dominant, forceful individual will break through all the barriers. A shy, diffident, retiring individual will not want to make the effort. Then there are all the processes involved in transmitting the thought, picture or symbol -- we do not speak words in our world -- through the medium’s guides, or even direct to the medium. If it is done by means of clairvoyance, all this is a very intricate process. Do not think that because you hear me talk with facility through this instrument that it is easy. Even I have to use what I call a multitude of threads to maintain my hold on this instrument. At any given moment, any one of these threads may be severed and away goes some of my power. We have many problems to elucidate in the understanding of communication. Do not ever let it be said that it is always easy. When you have the right conditions, it can be very easy. But there are so many factors that can interfere, and sometimes because of these factors we are blamed. It requires the operation of very delicate, subtle conditions, even for one who is experienced to act as a go-between. There are so many factors that can go awry. You realize that in this process of transformation, this stepping down, much of the beauty, lustre and radiance must be lost. But when spirit communicates with spirit direct, when mind communicates with mind and soul with soul, when there is inspiration or imagination, it merely means that the mind is being enriched with impressions from beyond. The more you worry about it the worse it becomes, because to be successful in its transmission the essential - 21 -

condition is a quietude, a passivity, a confidence based on the certainty that attunement is taking place. Once you set up wavering doubts, these by their very nature clog the lines of communication. I do not wish to suggest that every thought which reaches your mind has its origin in our world. Obviously that would not be true, but it is true to say that you must not be quick to dismiss as imagination so much that is the result of deliberate effort to enrich your mind and soul. Always remember that it is not like a communication in your world where there is only one plane, one level of consciousness involved. You have to reduce spirit to matter, two entirely different forms of expression, and in that process of stepping down many things can go wrong. We have a long way to go in perfecting the means. In our world there is constant experimentation, research and investigation in every field of communication, in the mental, physical and in healing. Always there is activity in trying to achieve a better result. That is why you see the improvement made as years continue. That is the purpose behind gatherings such as this, because it is only through the constant providing of conditions that we can develop your powers and bring to bear a large measure of the power at our command. They have to be harmonized, so that the results can become effective in your world. The important thing is that the lines have been laid, the channels are open, and we can transmit. There was a time when there were hardly any lines, and hardly any channels. Why people in your world prefer the darkness of ignorance to the light of truth is something I do not understand. We are always concerned with those who can reach and help other people. Every new channel is one more means of spreading knowledge, of spreading spiritual power and working towards the amelioration and betterment of the whole human race. This is a great truth which is part of an infinite truth. There is a serious purpose which underlies the whole of our work. I am only one of many ambassadors, part of a vast plan created in a world beyond yours, directed to help those who are ready to be helped. We must keep on touching souls, awakening slumbering souls, getting them to realize the greatness that could be theirs. We offer them gifts of the spirit that bring with them the full luster of their own dignity and grandeur. If obstinate man refuses this, he is turning his back on the greatest gifts offered by the greatest power in the universe.

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We have nothing to offer but the truth, and it is the truth that will set men free. Why this should incur enmity, displeasure, hostility, opposition and misrepresentation, I do not know. Maybe they are mistaken. Their judgment has become warped and they are incapable of realizing that there can be truth outside themselves. Sometimes I think they must think that it is very wrong of the Great Spirit to reveal His wisdom outside their organization. But as it is said, The ways of God are not the ways of man. Perhaps it is good it is not so. In the case of the churches you have a great difficulty. You have men who earnestly believe that theirs is the truth and they are defending what is to them something very dear. They do not realize that their system has been built on something which originally was divine in origin but has been overlaid through the centuries by what was devised from the mind of man. They cannot isolate the original from the wrapping. They worship the wrapping as being divine. If they have become fossilized mentally and spiritually, nothing can reach them. The Great Spirit has ordered it so that through some mental or spiritual upheaval you are given the opportunity of finding truth, but it does not always happen. If through trouble, sorrow, sickness or sadness their souls are touched, then the experience has been worthwhile. The whole purpose of the return from our world to yours is to draw attention to spiritual realities. It is as simple as that. We could easily be unconcerned with your world and its activities. There is no compulsion to associate ourselves with you, and you have no means of forcing our attention. Our efforts are voluntary because we love you, with the whole of humanity, and desire to help you. It could even be argued that perhaps our love, like a good many forms of love, is a little selfish because we have seen so many come to our world unfitted human wreckages, not ready and poorly equipped. It becomes so much easier if they learned the lessons in the place where they were intended to learn them, the schoolhouse of earth. The whole purpose is to draw attention to spiritual realities, to show that very being starts the physical course with a spiritual heritage conferred by the act of birth. The life force is the divine spark, spiritual in nature, which is intended to grow equally with the physical body. The majority of mankind concerns itself only with physical growth. Some of it is concerned with mental growth, and a few concerned with spiritual growth. The only enduring reality is spirit. If we succeed by a variety of means in making man aware of his spiritual nature which is his reality, it transforms the whole of his life. He sees its purpose, is conscious of his origin, becomes aware of his destiny and should live his life in the implications of the knowledge which he has received. That very simply is the plan behind all our activities.

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When it is applied to daily life, then you will drive away all fear, worry, discord, hatred, disease, selfishness and pride, and there will truly be peace based upon a genuine spiritual brotherhood. Increasing awareness of these eternal truths makes your souls and your spiritual bodies receptive to the powers from our world. That is the magnetic link between earth and ourselves. In order to reach your world, we must have the means of doing it. We must have the channels through which this power can flow. Part of your psychic and spiritual unfoldment consists in becoming more and more receptive to our influences. As your soul natures blend with your spirit co-operators, so they can transmit through you that power which can help in times of crisis, difficulty and danger. This power is hard to define because it is impalpable and intangible from the material standpoint, but it is none the less real. It is part of the force of life, it is part of the Great Spirit, it is in essence the same as the power which gives consciousness and being to every facet of activity in the universe. It is the same power that enables the seed to grow and to blossom, and another seed to fruit, the tree to grow and a soul to unfold itself. It has an infinite number of possible manifestations. It can revive, resuscitate, reinvigorate, recharge and revitalize. It can inspire, it can heal, and when the conditions are suitable, it can produce physical results in your world. When you retire into your own sanctuary for the purpose of giving healing to others, as a corollary you are also unfolding your own channel for receiving spirit power. The two go together. Often when people sit in circles for development and nothing apparently is happening, a great work is being done in strengthening and unifying the links between matter and spirit, for the transmission of spirit power is a highly intricate and delicate process. If people were highly developed and their lives were more spiritual than material, instead of, as at present, more material and less spiritual, then the task would be easier because the common nexus between us is spirit. Alas, with the vast majority of individuals, the spirit is so deeply embedded, so embryonic, so latent, that it is with the utmost difficulty that it can be reached at all. Some are so engrossed in matter that the spirit within them is but a tiny flicker, so small that it produces practically no light. But it is there. When they are ready, after they have been in the crucible of suffering, then they too can be awakened, then they too can be aware, then they too can understand spiritual realities, themselves and the Great Spirit, the link between them and everyone else and all creatures, and realize the fundamental bond of unity that is part of the natural law. When you open the door of your soul to one form of knowledge, you must not close it, but must allow the processes of unfoldment to continue. You will

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not attain perfection in your world, but you can strive to improve your mental and your spiritual outlook. There lies always the larger task of teaching the many whose lot is not so rich as ours in mind or spirit, to bind up broken hearts to show how the sick can be healed, to emphasize those eternal spiritual truths which are the only foundations for societies to endure, to drive out and banish all the fog and mist, the error and superstition, the vested interests that are the obstacles to the full flowing of spirit power that can illumine and beautify and dignify the world in which you live. It is not an easy task for people who are invisible, so far as you are concerned, and who are impalpable, so far as worldly sense is concerned, to make their impact on a world of matter. As long as you maintain a good heart, a willing spirit, a receptive mind and undimmed faith, then this channel is open and you automatically are the better for it in all respects, spiritually, mentally and materially. What so many people do not realize is that when they do not get the answers to the things that they want, it is because they themselves do not provide the channel by which the help can come. We have no hands apart from yours. In order for spirit to make its mark upon matter, it must have some nexus that is responsive to spirit and can express itself in matter. It is so simple when you realize it. All I would urge is to go on and know that the power which is sustaining and supporting you is the divine power and it will not fail in its task. If you succeed in enabling one soul in darkness to find the light, one troubled, wearied individual to gain strength, if you comfort one mourner, if you heal one sick person, if you prevent exploitation of and cruelty even to one animal, then indeed your earthly life has been well worth living. Never weary in the fight for the things that matter. This is the greatest of all fights, the eternal war against materialism, selfishness, these cancers that are festering in your world today and lead so many on to foolish paths where they perish in the darkness without a realization of the purpose for which they were born into the world. No effort for good is lost, no attempt to help is futile. Never be weary in your well-doing, never be disappointed if you do not see the results. Just go on and I know that every attempt to serve automatically calls to your aid beings from our world who will lend their aid to your labor. You never work alone. Always you are surrounded by the host of the shining ones whose arms will support you no matter what circumstances arise. Place your complete faith in and rely on the power which cannot fail you. There is no security in your world at all. The only security is in the unseen, the invisible, in the eternal realities which cannot be measured by any apparatus in your world. - 25 -

Your security is the strength of the spirit, the majestic power which is the means by which the Great Spirit expresses itself everywhere. When all else has changed its form, either by being reduced to ashes or by crumbling into dust, the realities of the spirit will still stand, unchanging, immutable, as the unshakable base on which to build. I know it is very hard for you, living in a world of matter in which all is measured by your physical senses, to appreciate the nature of reality. It escapes you all the time. But if I can convey, in however adequate a form, the fact that spirit is the enduring substance of all eternity, and that nothing else matters, and if I can encourage you to build on truth and not on shifting sands, then at least I am helping to fulfill my mission.

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Creation Is Infinite A PRAISEWORTHY characteristic of Silver Birch was that no matter how difficult or obscure a subject put to him he always had at his command a superb and instant answer. Indeed, the beloved guide welcomed the points which some lesser beings might have dodged. Journalist A.W. Austen, a circle member for some years told of a remarkable question-and-answer session between this world and the next. What do you consider to be the most urgent reform that is necessary in the world? Austen asked. That is a very hard question, Silver Birch admitted, for all over your world there are injustices that cry out to be remedied. There are wrongs that shriek to be righted; there are so many pestilential blots on your civilization that it is hard to know where to make a start. But the most urgent reform, as I see it, is to get rid of the needless poverty, desolation and misery which is the fate of countless thousands. When there is so much, that any should be denied the very fundamentals of material existence is very wrong. The greatest reform that cries out for accomplishment is to redress the disparity between those who have too much and those who have not enough. How can you reach souls to find themselves when their poor, pitiable, emaciated physical bodies are not a fitting temple for the spirit of God to dwell therein? We are not blind to the prime necessities of your physical selves and our mission is to bring to your world those conditions of living which enable body, soul and mind to find the realities necessary for their existence in a state of happiness and well-being. Next Austen asked the wise spirit teacher, If you were a dictator what would be your first reform? But Silver Birch would not even consider the possibility of his being a dictator. I cannot put myself in a position where I would have a world of puppets at my disposal, he said, for that is contrary to the Law as I know it. It is not through dictatorships, through enforced commands which must be obeyed in fear and trembling lest dire punishment awaits, so that peace, harmony and happiness can come to your world. You cannot set the world right by a series of ordinances that must be immediately obeyed. The chaos caused by years and years of confusion can only gradually become clarified and even then only

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through goodwill, the desire to be of real helpfulness imbuing all those who are the leaders of mankind. neither I, nor any other who claims to be a spiritual teacher, could ever act as a dictator, for our whole mission is to awaken the slumbering conscience, to teach the dormant spirit to arise and claim the inherent gift of the Great Spirit that is on its own. Only thus will true happiness and peace and concord come to your world. No one person on earth can reach that stage of perfection where he is entitled to rule over others and his words to be obeyed as implicit commands decreed by infallible authority. Here Austen asked Silver Birch what he considered to be the most necessary step in Britain’s relations with other countries. This country of yours has a great mission to perform, for it is destined to give a lead in bringing peace and also in staving off many of the disasters that threaten so many countries, answered the guide. But it will have to remember that before there can be peace in your world there will have to be a spirit of self-sacrifice and service. Unless those who see with the eyes of discernment are prepared to make concessions, are prepared to give that which is not necessary for their own happiness and well-being but would enable other countries to find solutions to their problems - unless a lead is given in that direction, your country will fail in its mission. Some countries have too much; some have too little. You are rich in many things and where other countries are poor in those same things you could arrange a means of exchange that would enable problems to be solved without the shedding determination based upon obstinacy to say, what we have we hold. Unless you are prepared to give, you cannot receive. Are you thinking of colonies? Austen interposed. Yes, everything, he said. The land, the sea, the air - those do not belong to countries; they belong to the Great Spirit of all life. His spirit is expressed in His children, and they should receive, as part of their natural heritage, all that is necessary for their well-being, their development, their unfoldment and their experience on earth, so that when they lay down their burdens when death comes they are ready to die, equipped, prepared for the greater life in the world of spirit. Often Silver Birch spoke of a New World, one without war where a spirit of brotherhood would be expressed. Arising from the spirit answers, Austen wanted to know whether less evolved souls would always cause trouble in the world and retard progress

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Yes, but always remember this, that what you call unevolved souls are really unevolved by comparison with those who are more evolved, said the guide. As your standard becomes higher, so you recognize that those you considered were evolved are not so evolved as you thought they were. All the difficulties of your world, and indeed those belonging to the lower strata of my life, are caused wholly and solely by selfishness, greed, avarice, self-interest in all its expressions. There will be always some less evolved than others. How else would you have it? Would you have all humanity reaching the same stage of evolution at the same time? Would you have every human being molded to the same pattern at the same point of progress at the same time? Would you reduce all life to a state of monotonous equality in regard to its development? Would you have only light and no shade? Would you have only sunshine and no storm? Would you have only virtue and no wickedness? Would you have laughter and no tears? How would you regulate your world unless it be through an infinite variety of expression? Austen suggested to Silver Birch that, in view of the many differences in evolution that must always be present, his description of the New World seemed to be too optimistic. No, the New World is born, the guide declared, born in agony of birth, with a baptism of tears and misery and sadness. But the New World is here. Its rays are beginning to pierce the fog of your world. But even in this New World all will not have been achieved. There will be plenty to remedy, to improve, to strengthen. There will still be weakness to be overcome, there will still be troubles to be eradicated. But there will be a new basis for life. Much of the needless misery, much of the needless deprivation, much of the needless starvation and sadness will have gone. The basis of life will be changed, for gradually selfishness will be overthrown and service will reign in its place. But is it not true that we shall only get what we deserve? Austen queried. Yes, the New World will come more quickly or more slowly, as more of you help us or hinder us in our efforts to co-operate with you, said Silver Birch. You will not get more than you deserve or less than you deserve, for so perfect is natural law in its expression that its scales are always evenly balanced. They are weighted down neither on one side nor the other. I tell you of conditions that are operating and, as they continue to operate, what will be changed. Do not forget that you will reap in your world the harvest of countless generations of labor wrought by many pioneers, idealists and reformers, who made sacrifices to advance the lot of mankind.

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To Austen it seemed unfair that some newsouls should be born into conditions that were far better than those into which other newsouls had similarly been born. Could Silver Birch explain the apparent injustice? They will be born into a better world, but more will be expected of them in consequence, he said, for they will not have to fight the fights that others have had to win in days gone by. It is purely a matter of comparison. Remember this always, no man cheats the laws of the Great Spirit. At no time can you alter in any way by one hair’s breadth what you deserve. Reward and punishment are fixed and immutable, determined only by your conduct in your life. There is no favoritism, there is no evasion. Divine justice is perfect in its expression. You will find that you will receive just what you have earned - not one whit more, not one whit less. That is how we ought to want it, Austen commented. That is how men and women of courage should desire it, said Silver Birch, not to have rewards they have not earned or punishments they have not deserved. You should be prepared to endure the punishments that you deserve and carry upon your shoulders the responsibilities that you have created. It was all said in the Bible -- be not deceived, God is not mocked, for what a man sows that he will reap. And I cannot say it any better than that. The laws that are made in your world may favor some unduly and punish others needlessly. There may be privileges that come because of rank or title or high position. But these will not obtain in the world of spirit. Every allowance will be made. The soul will register just that stage of attainment that it has reached by its life in your world - no higher, no lower. Just what you have made yourself to be, that you will be when death calls you to another life. Next Austen asked Silver Birch what should be the attitude to spiritual or divine guidance received by individuals who sit alone in the silence. There is no spirit, however exalted, in my world who would desire you to accept his teachings without consideration, without pondering and without reflection, he replied. We do not desire automatons who will mechanically perform all that is said. Our mission is to increase your own sense of responsibility, to stimulate the divine that is within you, to enable you to have even greater command over your reasoning faculties. God speaks to you through your mind. Whilst it is true that the kingdom of heaven is within, the mind is also God’s kingdom - or should be. Never do anything which your reason rejects. Enthrone reason as your guide. We would never suggest to you that you perform tasks that are foreign to your common sense. Ours is a mission of co-operation. We strive to make - 30 -

you aware of the infinite qualities that you possess, many of them so dormant that they never find expression. We want you to find yourselves, your real selves, so that you may order your lives in such a fashion that the Great Spirit is expressed through you. If you receive promptings, if you receive what seem to be messages in the silence that urge tasks upon you, do not perform them if your common sense objects. Only those who have reached a certain standard of spiritual attainment can be sure of the prompting that comes to them in the silence. It is better that you work with us, once you have learned to trust us and are convinced that our mission is to serve you and through you to serve humanity. We have striven to demonstrate that we are experienced in the knowledge of spiritual laws, that ours is a divine mission that seeks always to bring the richness of spiritual truth within your grasp. Is it not better that you should cooperate with known intelligence of proved worth rather than that alone, unguided, you should seek to penetrate what is the unknown? What would your answer be? Austen told the guide he considered it always to be better to know with whom one is speaking. That is so, said Silver Birch. When the teacher has proved his ability to teach, why not utilize his services that are freely offered you? When a soul has reached the stage of development when he is aware of all who seek to inspire him and to commune with him from the world of spirit, then there are no difficulties to be overcome. But all humanity is at different stages of evolution. Still the two-world debate continued. Austen admitted that to him it seemed there was a limit to the sacredness of life. Taking it to an extreme, it seemed to him foolish to suggest that the life of a germ is sacred if by sparing it we endanger the life of a human being. Would the spirit mentor enlighten him on this point? Where does consciousness begin? asked Silver Birch. Has the germ consciousness? Has a snake consciousness? Has a flea consciousness? Has a microbe consciousness? They have not in the sense that you understand consciousness, the awareness of oneself. Consciousness is the knowledge of what you are, who you are, what you could be. That consciousness is not resident in germs. Where there is conscious life you have creation at work, and it is wrong for you to interfere with that consciousness and to prevent it from having the fullness of expression in your world to which it is entitled.

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This answer did not satisfy Austen who reminded the guide that animals did not possess consciousness as defined, but we were taught it was wrong to kill them. Below individual consciousness, in the animal life there is a group consciousness, he said. Below animals, the group consciousness ceases to function. There is no consciousness in a germ. Is the germ capable of feeling pain? asked Austen. no, said Silver Birch. Then are we to be guided by whether pain is involved in killing? was the next question. The guide is consciousness, said Silver Birch. Where there is consciousness, it is wrong to kill. You should allow the fullest freedom to all human beings to enjoy life in all its expressions, so that its richness may reach them and equip them for death, the liberator into the world of spirit. But because your world is a changing world, you are often compelled to interfere with the rights of others because you desire to help them. Your motive, sincerely, honestly and truthfully is to serve. I say that because of vivisection. To me, that is wrong. It is often cruel and it is needless and it fails also to achieve its object. But I know that there are many who perform vivisection, not because they wish to inflict cruelty on animals, but only because their desire is to help humanity. They think that they can gain knowledge which will help them in their conquering of disease. Their motive is sincere. But where there is needless killing, where there is slaughter of animals solely to satisfy human appetites, where beautiful birds are shot in the name of sport - then there can be no justification. Life is sacred, life is of the Great Spirit. When life becomes conscious and takes human - and even, in its lower stage, animal form - it should be entitled to be treated with sacredness. Life should not be held cheaply, for life is the Great Spirit in expression. You have no power to create life, therefore you should not seek to destroy its means of expression. Realize this, that when we are asked questions to which there can be no answer of Yesor No we do try honestly to give you a point of view that will help. I have no desire to be arbitrary, I only want to be of service. It may be that you could find apparent contradictions in answers given at different times, but then we are dealing with different phases of the subject.

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And remember also I make no claim to infallibility. I do not say that I have reached the limit of all knowledge and wisdom. I, like you, am human still. I, too, strive after perfection. I, too, have weaknesses to conquer. I, too, have progress to achieve. I do not say that what I tell you represents final truth. I only tell you what I know and, if I do not know, what I believe. If the views that I express cause disagreement, that is all to the good, for then we can reason with one another. You can add your stock of wisdom to mine and in considering these problems we can learn from one another and help one another to a greater understanding. Co-operation does not only mean that we should try to help you, but that you should also try to help us. I do not want it to be assumed that at any stage, when a problem arises, you say, Consult Silver Birch, consult Red Cloud, consult White Hawk, and what they say is final. That is not so. We will give you the knowledge at our disposal, but remember we make no claim to infallibility. If we fail to stimulate you into thinking for yourselves, then we have failed in our mission. At this juncture, Austen suggested to Silver Birch that to some the knowledge of life after death might tend to cheapen life on earth; they might consider that if life could not be destroyed there was less harm than they previously thought in killing. Have we not always taught that increasing knowledge brings increasing responsibilities? asked the guide. Because you have this knowledge, you have a greater responsibility in the way you use it. Your standard of life must be higher because of knowledge and, if it is not, then you yourself will pay the price. You cannot cheat. You cannot pretend once knowledge is vouchsafed to you. Once you understand the Plan, and the pattern of life has been made clear to you, it should give you an increasing responsibility of your duty to your neighbor, to your world and to yourself. Life should be richer, more sacred, and the desire to serve should burn brightly within you. If knowledge does not do that for you, then you do not possess it. It has passed you by, for if you fail to apply truth when you know truth, your spirit is impoverished and you are the sufferer. The laws of the Great Spirit cannot be cheated, not even by philosophical quibbles. What you call Spiritualism should make you aware of your place in the scheme of life. If it does not, you have not learned its lessons and must pay the price. Do not blame truth if you do not understand it. Blame yourself, for truth is still true even though it has not penetrated through to you. Truth is not altered by argument. Because it is truth, it is true.

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When Austen similarly interviewed White Eagle, the guide of Bertha Hirst, he could not explain to Austen the tie between people and their guardians, as he confessed he had never considered the question. So Austen asked Silver Birch whether he could answer it. It is a tie of spiritual affinity, he said. Sometimes that happens when there is a blood relationship at all. Wherever there is a mutual interest, based upon the tie of affinity between kindred spirits, then the guardian or guide - call it what name you like - is able to render service because the attraction is there. The greater the bond of spiritual affinity, the closer is the proximity between the guardian and its charge. Remembering that Silver Birth had said earlier in the interview that individual consciousness does not exist before the soul is incarnated into matter, Austen wondered how it could have developed characteristics sufficient to create a spiritual affinity. That is something that is so hard to express in your earthly language, said the guide. There is a bond that can be determined from the moment of conception. The tiny germ cells that, when they coalesce, provide the physical vehicle of life, possess within themselves all the qualities that later find expression in the mature earthly body. So, too, does the spirit possess in miniature the spiritual qualities that will also find expression. Did that mean that our evolution was determined insofar as we had to evolve along certain individual lines but could choose our own rate of evolution? Austen asked. Certain things are fixed, by virtue of the body at your command and by the spirit that incarnates into that body, said Silver Birch. Irrespective of rebirth, the law that determines the invasion of that body by spirit also to a large extent determines the expression. I do not want that to be construed into saying that everything is predestined, but in a world of law human life conforms to law. There are variations, but in the main much has to be fixed. There is a quality in the spirit that is known to advanced souls in our world, and the appointment of a guardian is dependent upon the affinity of spiritual interest between them. Do you mean that guardians are appointed by somebody else, and it is not a choice of a charge by the guardian? Austen queried, probing further. Yes, they are appointed always, said Silver Birch. There is law in my world, much more rigidly than in yours. The harmony between them is determined because the qualities are known at the beginning. The headmaster of a - 34 -

school, if he knew the latent qualities of all the children entrusted to his charge, and knew the capabilities of the teachers he had, would know which children should be under the tutors of each teacher. Unfortunately, the factors are not always known in your world - but they are in ours.

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Who are You? Who are you? do you know? You know just that facet that is expressed through your body, but that is only the pin point as distinct from the larger life which is beyond it. Then you say you would like to find out which is you and which is not you, You have to begin by discovering which is you altogether. Do you think that you have in this earthly life expressed anything but a tiny segment of your whole self? And do you think that the consciousness that is registered now is anything but a tiny fraction of the greater, complete consciousness that is you? How are you to decide then which is your thought, your imagination, and which is the impression, the guidance which comes from your larger self or from higher realms that are using you? You must get the proper perspective. You must realize that you are spiritual beings expressing yourselves through physical bodies and that the spirit is the supreme part of you. The spirit is the higher, the body is the lower. The spirit is the master, the body is the servant. The spirit is king, the body is the subject. The spirit is that part of you which is divine. It is the self-same spirit which has created, devised and fashioned the whole universe. You have in embryo, in miniature, in microcosm, all the vast powers that belong to what you call God. If you would allow this innate divine strength to rise to the surface, to dominate your lives, you would banish every care, anxiety and worry, because you would know that there is nothing that could happen in your world over which you could not triumph. That is what you have to learn. It is not easy. Give attention to your body as the house in which you live. But it is only the house, it is not you. Being the house, it must be kept in good condition, in good repair, so that the tenant can be amply looked after. But always remember it is only the house; it is not the tenant. That same power which fashioned the universe is the power which is responsible for life. Life is not physical or material, life is spirit, and spirit is life. Wherever there is life there is spirit and where there is spirit there is life. The power, which is you, is the power which is life and you have a kinship with the Great Spirit that enables you to participate in all the infinite processes of creation. You can call it up any time you so desire from the well of your own - 36 -

being - the tremendous power of the spirit that is resident within you, that is capable of giving you a dynamic, a vitality, and of sustaining you. You have a task to perform. You will imbibe this knowledge and you will use it to help others. You will develop the gifts of the spirit yourself and when you have done so you will become a little lighthouse that sheds the beams of truth to weary souls still in the darkness. When you do that you will fulfill the purpose of your existence. There is a plan into which we all fit and that will operate with the consent of your free will. There is a saying in the East that when the pupil is ready the master appears. When you are spiritually ready the door will open. You will not have to ask. The door will open so wide that you will walk through it and the task will begin. We can never promise that your life will be free from problems, perplexity, or even pain. We can promise that within yourself you will find the means to overcome all handicaps and disabilities. As you strive to express the highest, the deepest, the greatest within yourself, so you will attract to your aid those beings from our world who love you, who desire to help you, and through you help others. Alas, there are too many who live encompassed by swirling mists of darkness, whose shoulders groan under the weight of their load and who know not where to turn, sick in body, mind and soul. These are the ones we must always try to help. We would be failing in our purpose if we were to declare that the task of spiritual attainment is easy and that those who, in any measure, would attempt to spread light where there is darkness will meet with an easy task. It could never be so. The whole of history is against it, for truth and error have been engaged in a dreadful warfare that will not cease until infinite perfection can be achieved and that, in the very nature of the case, is unattainable. It is a long and difficult and toilsome struggle in which we are engaged. You do not realize the prejudice, opposition, hostility, antagonism, misrepresentation, superstition and deliberate attack that will have to be faced, I do not say these things to daunt you, but to place any quest in its proper setting. I know how difficult it is. I have had to overcome, with all the power at my command, almost insuperable obstacles to reach your world, and I am not alone in this. I am one of those who elected to return because it was seen that the calamities which man would bring on himself were of so awesome a character that unless the

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power of the spirit could effect its bridgeheads everywhere, man would destroy himself physically and the world in which he lives. Wonderful though man measures his material achievements, spiritually he is still very puny. Oh that the achievements of the spirit could match the achievements of matter, that progress could be made in fields of the mind and spirit that are comparable with the advance that has been made in certain fields of material endeavor! Because man is not spiritually led he is in danger of blowing himself up with forces that he is not entitled to have at his command. All our efforts are directed, wherever channels can be found, towards the single purpose of ensuring that the spiritual truths upon which the whole of life are founded should be the basis by which man everywhere builds his life. All jealousies and bickering, all strife and fratricide, all war and chaos, all envy, greed and malice can be driven from the earth. Compassion, kindness, gentleness, amity and co-operation can be the principles by which men rule everywhere because of the recognition of their common spiritual nature. There is a bright side. It is not a picture of unrelieved gloom, because amid such obstacles and difficulties any step forward is great progress. If you can help only one soul to be comforted when all seems drear, dark and dismal, then it has all been worth while. And you can help far more than one. The prizes of the spirit are not easy to be won, otherwise they would not be worth winning. If the victor makes no effort, what is his victory? If you can scale peaks without labor, what have you attained? It is the very essence of the case that spiritual attainment must be a lonely, solitary path that gets more and more isolated the farther you reach because you have to leave familiar landmarks behind. Emphasizing that wherever an effort is made by any human being on earth, at least an equal, and usually a greater effort is put forth from the Other Side, Silver Birch stressed: It is always true that any sincere request for spiritual help can never fail. You open yourself to this aid the moment you make this magnetic link with the world of spirit. It is very hard sometimes to find language that will convey the actuality of spiritual happenings because language, which is material, is not equal to the spiritual, which is immaterial. Words, at the best, are poor symbols to interpret a much greater reality. When you accept this knowledge it means your soul is ready; it has come into its own. So many people are unconscious of their higher nature, which is the reality and the mainspring of their existence. They do not understand that - 38 -

the reason they exist is because they are spiritual beings expressing themselves through material bodies. Even though they believe they have a soul or a spirit, they think of themselves in terms of a body with a spirit, whereas they are spirits with bodies. The real you is the spirit - the soul, the divine, the eternal. The body is fashioned to serve its purpose. It has a temporary existence in this form. When it has done its task, it crumbles away. But the spirit that incarnates at birth, that is important. The fact that you can receive this knowledge means that the divine has awakened within you. You have burst the bonds. The seed has begun to flower. It has forced its way up from the darkness into the light. And it will grow in beauty and richness as you allow it to do so. Then you begin to exercise true harmony of being which is the fundamental purpose of life on earth. Those who go through your life without allowing the spiritual nature to have its complete and proper exercise are just as handicapped as the physically blind, deaf and mute. Your spiritual nature has come into its own. The divine has been awakened. It is an index that points to the fact that you have reached that stage in your development when you are ready to obtain from life, not that which exists only on the surface, but all the richness that belongs only to the spirit. The riches of the spirit are far greater, far more beautiful, far more lustrous than all the gems of your world. They will endure long after the others have tarnished and rusted and decayed. Once the soul comes into its own it realizes its powers. These are part of the mightiest forces in the universe. You begin to make a channel through which help, guidance, inspiration, sustenance and wisdom can reach you from our world. This not only enables the ones who love you and who are tied by blood to come close, but others, who are in no way physically related. They have a spiritual relationship which is even more important. These draw closer and seek to bring their power to bear and help you in your lives. As this power obtains lodgment and builds itself up, so you become the possessor of that which the world can never give or take away, a rock based on confidence, calmness, resolution. Then you know beyond all doubt that there is nothing in the whole world that can disturb the real you, and that you are at one with the power which fashioned the whole of life. Men and women devote all their efforts to gain baubles and possessions far beyond what they need and sacrifice the eternal realities, which are the greatest assets the human being can have. Wherever you can, drop the seed. - 39 -

If you meet with rebuff, take no notice. Do not argue, do not attempt to become missionaries. You cannot force the seed to grow on barren soil. In the fullness of time some of these seeds will begin to take root. Those who have scoffed and ridiculed will come to you for help because they need it. The tie that binds us together is the tie of divinity. It encircles us all and holds us in an embrace of divine love. Nothing can happen throughout the universe to weaken that affectionate embrace as long as we are true and loyal to that which has been revealed to us. The Great Spirit will not fail us. We must not fail the Great Spirit. The whole of life pursues its course following ordained paths. The earth rotates on its axis, the tides ebb and flow, the stars and planets wheel across the sky following their charted course, the seasons come and go as part of the eternal cycle. The seeds grow and bloom and die, only to bloom again. Birds of diverse hues sing their cheerful notes, trees nod in the breeze, everywhere life obeys the law of which it is a part. We cannot put ourselves outside that divine ambit; we are part of it. Let us remember, wherever we may be, that the cloak of infinite love is wrapped around us, the divine arms enfold us and we are always in the presence of that power that made us part of itself.

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Spirit is Superior While the Roman Catholic Church admits of only three kinds of baptism baptism by water, baptism by blood and baptism by desire -- it leaves out the most essential form. You have all been baptized in the real meaning of the word -- baptized in the spirit, declared Silver Birch at one circle gathering. You have been born again. The soul has begun to lead you to find itself. The power of the Spirit is in your midst, and with it there comes not only reality, but certainty. It illumines the whole of your minds, fills your souls with peace and your hearts with love. It is the greatest manifestation of the Great Spirit. One of the sitters, rather puzzled by some of the phrases in Silver Birch’s invocations, asked, Is the Great Spirit really in everything - in every stone, for instance? The Great Spirit is in everything, the guide replied, nor nothing exists apart from the Great Spirit. Then is the Great Spirit responsible for earthquakes? the sitter asked. The Great Spirit is the Law - the Law that controls all things, was the reply. The Law governs all things. There is nothing in the universe which is outside the Law. I have often been puzzled by earthquakes, said the sitter, not quite satisfied with the guide’s answer. I know that earthquakes and storms and lightning puzzle the brains of those in your world, said Silver Birch, but they are all part of the universe. The universe is evolving, even as those who dwell in it are evolving. The world of matter is far from perfect yet - and it will not reach perfection. It will evolve higher and higher. Does that mean that the Great Spirit is evolving? queried the sitter. So, the Great Spirit is the Law and the Law is perfect, replied Silver Birch. But that part of the Great Spirit that is expressed in your world is subject to the evolution of that world as far as its expression is concerned.

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Remember that your world is evolving, and these things are the signs of its evolution. Your world was born in fire and tempest and is gradually evolving towards perfection. You cannot say that the Great Spirit is responsible for the beauty of the sunset and the sunrise, for the myriads of glittering stars in the firmament, for all the delightful songs of birds, and then say that the Great Spirit is not responsible for the storm and the lightning, the thunder and the rain. They are all part of the great law of the Great Spirit. In that sense, you might argue that the Great Spirit is responsible for those who are depraved, for those who are so unenlightened that they render harm to their brothers in your world. But to each one of you there is given that amount of free will which, as you evolve, you learn to exercise. The higher you evolve in the spiritual scale, the greater can you exercise your free will. You are your own limitation, but, because you are part of the Great Spirit, you can conquer all the difficulties and obstacles in your world. Spirit is superior to matter. Spirit is the king and matter is the servant. Spirit reigns supreme. It is the essence out of which all life is made, for spirit is life and life is spirit. Silver Birch was asked whether free will was limited in the sense that there are definite tendencies of events in relation to individuals. There are tendencies, vibrations, replied Silver Birch, but these are not insuperable. You are surrounded by radiations and influences, much of which can affect your destiny, but the Great Spirit has provided you with part of Himself, a part of His spirit which, when your free will is properly used according to your evolution, can enable you to conquer all that stands in the way of the fullest expression of that part of the Great Spirit that is within you. For you are the Great Spirit and the Great Spirit is you. When people say that communication with the dead retards them in their progress and drags them back unwillingly, they cannot know the facts. I love to hear the sound of your earthly voices, Silver Birch said. It gives me much happiness. And I know that you like to hear from me, for we have much to learn from each other. I try very hard to learn from you, of the things that belong to your world, so that I can add to my knowledge of earthly things and be of greater service if I can.

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But of our talks there will come much work, for there is a great work for all of us to do - a work to which many of us who live in the realms of spirit have dedicated the whole of our lives. Part of that work will be accomplished here. You have seen some of it already. You have seen how we have been enabled to touch those who live not only in your own little country, but in other countries in your world - Silver Birch was referring to the fact that there had frequently been visitors to the circle from overseas, some of whom had gone back and started home circles in their own countries as a result of their experiences here. That work will grow, he went on, as a power of the Spirit grows here. Must go on with your faithful service and know that not one moment which is dedicated to our service is in vain, for our coming together always brings a rich blessing upon you who are in the world of matter and we who are released from the world’s limitations. That blessing comes because our aim is not for ourselves but only for the service of others. Like baptism, the Church - and rightly - places great emphasis on the importance of marriage. But how does the spirit world view it? Silver Birch gave his opinion when addressing Vernon Moore, a circle member and his fiancée, Frances, who for many years took down the guide’s words in shorthand so they could be recorded, printed and sent out all over the world I want you both to realize that you begin now the greatest adventure of all, for two lives that have pursued separate courses are now come together to begin a united life, the guide began. Even as love has brought you to this place, even as love emanating from a world higher than yours guided your footsteps on paths of knowledge and truth, so has that same power brought you two together. Soon a man of God will read a few words from a book and, according to your world of matter, you will be joined in the bonds of holy matrimony. But I say to you there are no bonds unless you bind one another with love and affection. There are no ties unless you wish to tie one another with love and affection. Do not think only in terms of two sharing one life from the physical aspect. Remember that you are two spiritual beings, both portions of the Great Spirit, now coming together with pledges to cherish, to love and to serve one another even as a great love from this world strives to serve you both. Remember that you are uniting two souls to adventure together and that we look not so much upon the material aspect by the spiritual, which to us is the enduring reality. Do not expect that you will escape occasional sadness and sorrow, difficulty, trial and test, for these are parts of your evolution. When they arise, - 43 -

as arise they inevitably must, face them with honesty and know that they help to quicken your character and to bring you closer together. There are many here who look forward with joy to a celebration which will duplicate the one you have in your church, but which will be sanctified in our world by ties we regard as more enduring, for the promises uttered audibly by word of mouth are as nothing compared with the unspoken pledges of the soul. You are richly blessed, for you have knowledge. I wish you, on behalf of many here who stand beside me, a safe journey through life’s seas, happiness and joy abounding, but always ask you to remember that you continue to serve with the added fortification of love around you in the earthly world. Look up, not down, and realize that your strength cometh from above and from within your beings. Fortified by that knowledge, face the future knowing that all will be well and that where love dwells no harm can befall you. And I pray that the blessing of the Great Spirit rest with you and inspire you always in all aspects for your new life, and that you both shall forever be conscious of the love that is round and about you. The couple were members of Silver Birch’s circle until 1981 when his medium passed on. Frequently the guide spoke of the natural law. Once Vernon, a former Methodist missionary, asked, How are we to learn from natural law? You learn through the evolution of your own spirit, replied the guide. You learn first of all to discard all that which is false, all that which makes your reason revolt, all that which is not in consonance with the love and the wisdom of the Great Spirit. Before you learn, you must unlearn. You must discard all that which hinders your minds from thinking as they should. Thus your soul and your spirit grow and you are ready for higher knowledge. When you meet here, your soul is developing and you are becoming more accessible to the infinite wisdom of the Great Spirit. You are learning about the operation of laws that control spiritual phenomena. You are being taught about the operation of natural laws in relationship to the life that you live. As you fit yourself by progress so greater knowledge comes to you. I, whom you call Silver Birch, represent only a small portion of the knowledge that belongs to the infinity of the spheres. As you grow, other teachers greater than I can use me to impart knowledge and wisdom to you.

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To save the world, must we broadcast this teaching to everybody? asked Vernon. To save the world? questioned Silver Birch. The world must learn to perform its own salvation. There is no ready made plan. There is no prepared, cut-anddried system. Your world has to learn that, behind what it regards as the manifestation of life, there is the eternal reality of the spirit, that the children of matter are not only worldly beings but spiritual beings expressing themselves through bodies of matter. The bodies of matter must be as perfect as they can be made through having all the necessities of life freely at their disposal, as the Great Spirit would have them. Then their spirits must be freed from all dogmatic and creedal trammels, so that they do not give allegiance to things that have no real or spiritual value, so that they work only for that which is true, so that the warring and the quarreling and the strife over creeds and dogmas, which have held your world in chains for thousands of years, can be abolished. We preach the gospel of the spiritual brotherhood of all peoples, with the Great White Spirit as the common Father. What stands in the way is the earthly conception, the churches built on error, the usurping of privilege, the pride and the power of tyrants, petty tyrants who hold the whip hand. When someone said Thank you, Silver Birch, as usual, reminded those gathered that he must not be thanked, but that it was the Great Spirit to Whom gratitude should be expressed. We use the earth phrase out of habit, someone explained. I know my son, replied the guide. But if I did not always correct you and always draw attention to the laws of the Great Spirit, some would begin to pay us praise and to worship us, and then the same troubles would start once more. Silver Birch then spoke, when asked which spirit friends were present, of the enormous number who regularly attended the sittings of the circle. There are as many as 5, 000 people here tonight, he said.

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There are not only those you knew on earth, and those who are interested in the circle. There are those we bring to hear you talk, because they do not think that it is possible. Others are brought here so that they can learn how we come through to your world of matter, so that they can use other mediums in other parts of the world. There is a great missionary work, not only for your world but for our world too, for we do not sacrifice any time or power. The great lesson that those in my world have to learn is how to use spirit power in order to impress your minds. The great value of an understanding of these laws is that your minds become accessible. You do not realize how unknown to yourselves you are all the recipients of inspiration from the world of spirit. There are many in your world who are counted as great scientists, great inventors and great teachers. They are only the vehicles of intelligence from my world. It does not matter so long as the truth or the discovery is made known. Who receives the credit is of no account....... Every experience has its advantage and disadvantage. The higher your soul evolves the greater is the progress it has made -- but the more it knows there is to be evolved. That is its disadvantage, it is more dissatisfied. The more sensitive you become to beauty, the more sensitive you are to ugliness. The higher you rise, the lower you can sink. Life is shadow and sunlight, calm and storm. An even monotone is not life; life is composed of happiness and joy with occasional sadness, for it is only by having these extreme divergences that character can grow and experience come to the soul. That is why there is a lesson to be learned from sorrow, from the storm, from the bitterness of life. Sometimes those who are in the shadows rail against the Great Spirit because they do not understand that that experience is necessary to their own unfoldment, but sunshine is only to be truly appreciated if you have been in the shadows. Through comparison, the soul begins truly to live. If your experiences were limited only to that which you thought was good, happy and beautiful, life would be very empty, for it would possess no depth. The wise individual is the one who faces each new day with eagerness and steady resolve, determined to learn from all the experiences that await him,

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the lessons that they all can teach to help him on the infinite road that leads to the Great Spirit. Silver Birch devoted this particular sitting to answering the problems of the sitters. One wondered whether there was unlimited power at the disposal of spirit guides. The power we have is dependent on our own evolution and on the ability to receive and transmit, said the guide. Bur state of evolution determines the amount of power at our disposal. The instruments at our disposal determine the amount that can be poured through to your world. These are the factors which govern the receiving and the distributing of the power from our realms. Then there is unlimited power, if it can be used, commented the questioner. Yes, answered Silver Birch, because power comes from the Infinite Spirit. The circle member remarked that it seemed at séances that guides were always careful not to waste power, which would appear unnecessary if the supply were unlimited. When you are accustomed to manifestations, said the guide, you know that if you go beyond a certain limit then the sitters will have to pay the price in depletion and loss of nervous energy and force. We do not wish to be placed in a position where we are accused of undermining the health of those who come to us seeking manifestations of the power of the spirit. In fact, the reverse is true and your health should improve, for power that is normally repressed is brought into circulation - and remember, too, that the power we bring from our world is the power of life-giving essence which invigorates. It seemed that the sitting was hardly half over when Silver Birch announced that the time was almost exhausted. But the sitters were wrong and the guide was right, for when the medium came out of trance it was found that only five minutes were left. Before he went, Silver Birch said: I have tried to show myself as your friend, guardian and guide. I wanted you to feel that I was near you, that whatever qualities I might possess they did not prevent me from enjoying a close personal touch with you, that I was interested in your problems and your difficulties and ready to give you personal help and guidance if I could. Remember, I am not only a teacher, seeking to teach eternal truths, and reveal the powers of the spirit; I am also the friend of each one of you, for I

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love you dearly and strive always to help you with all the strength and power that I possess. Come to me always with your difficulties, no matter what they be. If I can help you, I will do so. If I cannot, I will strive to give you strength to help you through your challenges.

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Do Not Despair Britain - indeed the whole Commonwealth - was plunged into a crisis in faroff 1936 when King Edward VIII announced his abdication so he could marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson. Never before had modern day monarchy faced such a testing, turbulent time. Not surprisingly this headline making event was raised at the Hannen Swaffer home circle where Silver Birch gave a spirit view of the abdication. The conditions of your world have been very difficult, he said, but now they begin to clear away. I want to remind you all that there is a great lesson to be learned from it. In all moments of crisis, fix your minds upon the eternal things of the spirit. Do not dwell too much on the kingdom of empires and dominions, but on the Kingdom of Heaven, which has yet to descend on earth. Do not have excessive adoration for those who are only men. Remember that there is only one King in the universe, the King of all life, Whose kingdom embraces every child of the Great Spirit and Who wants all His plenteous bounty distributed freely. Do not let your attention be diverted, because of glamour, from the great eternal realities. Remember the conditions of those who dwell in misery and in darkness, those who lack food, those whom the sun seldom reaches, those who are prevented from breathing as they should the air which comes from the Great Spirit of life. Remember the greater tasks, the greater problems. Remember the masses who cry out, whose pain, bitterness and sorrow are far, far greater than the difficulties of only one. That is the great lesson for all in your world of matter to learn. At this point Hannen Swaffer asked whether his view of the crisis - it was printed in psychic News - was too harsh. The paper swiftly received several letters, one saying that Swaffer’s stand was The most heartless thing that has ever been written. Another declared that his comments were ungentlemanly, unmanly, ungenerous and un-Christian. So, replied Silver Birch. When you speak truth, truth finds its way into their hearts. Sometimes it meets with the resistance of superstition and prejudice.

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But those walls will crumble gradually. You could not have said it many years ago, but you say it today. A few complain, but they are nothing. They are those within whose minds traditional things die hard. They do not reason with logic and understanding. You told them of the natural laws. They are the only ones that matter. When the passions created in men’s breasts die down, they will have to confront reality. That is your task in your world of matter - to tear away the veils of illusion and to reveal truth. Some cannot behold truth’s blinding light, but it is of no account. They are not ready. The truth reigns supreme. Ignorance flees before its approach. It is because our message is true that we one day will reign supreme - not we who are the instruments, but that which we represent, the love of the Great Spirit, the infinity of His bounty, the love, the wisdom, the knowledge that watches over all mankind. Away must go every obstacle that prevents the fullness of the Great Spirit being revealed. Away must go all servitude. Away must go all barriers. That is the task upon which we are all engaged. I only try to tell you a few of the things that I have learned, because I know that they can help you even if they make you examine again the fundamental principles of life. Sometimes, when you are engrossed in your daily tasks and the problems of your world surround you, you are apt to forget the great eternal spiritual principles upon which all life is based. If I remind you of these things, they help you to focus your minds so that you can get the true balance and are able to render still greater service. Your world has yet to learn so much. The greater the responsibility, the greater the sacrifice. The greater the knowledge that you possess, the greater the responsibility. You can gain nothing without a price. There is a price always to be paid. A month earlier Silver Birch gave his then customary Armistice Day message. He told those present: I want you all to remember when, in a few days time, the thoughts of the whole of your nation are centered on the many who laid down their bodies of matter in service, that it is a great reminder to you all of the way in which millions of the children of the Great Spirit have been for years betrayed by those who lead in the affairs of men. - 50 -

The sacrifices have all been in vain, and the sacred reminder comes to each one of you to realize that there are only a few very simple ways by which peace, harmony and happiness can reign. You build up systems based on greed and selfishness and, as result, you reap war and poverty, starvation misery, distress and chaos. And then you ask us how we can help you, when all the time the message of the Spirit has been forgotten and neglected, even by those who should preach the word of the Great Spirit. Temporal power is as naught beside spiritual realities, and, although many sneer at the things of the Spirit, the solution of all the troubles of your world will only be found when all people, in the spirit of goodwill, apply spiritual truth to material problems. You are nearer disaster today than you were when it was announced that war had ceased. You are nearer to grave and terrible troubles. The world is heading straight for that which spells bloodshed, great bloodshed. I speak with gravity because of that which I know. It may be that the world will be saved from itself, but only if the efforts of all those who seek to serve, not to aggrandize self, triumph over the power of greed and selfishness. Peace will not come to your world from war. Happiness will not come from misery. Laughter cannot come from tears of sorrow. There is plenty for all. But greed stands in the way. Those who seek to rule by the sword must perish by the sword. That same truth prevails today. But, throughout all the darkness, there is a glimmer of hope. Do not despair. Hold fast to that which you know to be true. A year later in another Armistice Day message the guide referred to the Spanish Civil War in which, incidentally, Maurice Barbanell and his wife were inadvertently caught up! Happily both escaped injury and were escorted to the French border by gun-toting soldiers. The ever-eloquent guide commented: Each succeeding year makes the futility of this human sacrifice more apparent. Your world will pay for just two minutes of its time and silent tribute in memory of the glorious dead, and after that they will be forgotten for another year, until they are taken off the shelf and dusted once again. Their sacrifices were all in vain. They have been agonized for nineteen years. The Great War! Its greatness consisted in the amount of slaughter, wasted slaughter. The Great War, that was to end all war! How hollow, how full of mockery do those words sound! - 51 -

Do you not consider that those who made every sacrifice that they could make in the world of matter, even to laying down their physical lives, have not spent years in bitter disillusionment? They were cut off in the prime of earthly life. They were sent unprepared into the world of spirit. They passed on cheerfully for an ideal, that your civilization might be saved, and they have been betrayed ever since. War has not been driven from the face of the earth, for, even as you will pay tribute to the fallen dead, as you call them, of your last war, there will be no armistice in the East or in Spain, where the killing will continue even without a cessation of two minutes. Does your world of matter realize that peace can only come from the application of spiritual laws to worldly matters? It is selfishness that brings not only war, with its train of bloodshed, misery and weeping, but chaos, confusion, disaster and bankruptcy. They must learn that only by substituting service for selfishness can peace come, that the old ideas of materialism and power and desires to aggrandize nations must be swept away and in their place there must reign the desire to live for one another, the stronger to help the weaker, the richer to give to the poorer. Do not insult those who have been translated to spirit realms with tributes that come from the lips and not from the heart. All other methods have been tried and they have failed you. But not yet has the application of spiritual truths been tried. Unless your world does so, it will continue with war and bloodshed that will, in the end, destroy your much vaunted civilization. Perhaps at this point it is pertinent to include the guide’s words upon civilization. Asked to comment on it, Silver Birch replied that free will is a gift of the Great Spirit, but if it is not used aright then the price must be paid. The laws must be obeyed, he went on. If the world lives with the law, it reaps the benefits. If it lives against the law, it reaps the results. One way brings peace and happiness and plenty, the other way misery and war and bloodshed and chaos. We are despised in your world of matter by those who should be the leaders of the children of the Great Spirit. We are rejected by those who should welcome us because we come in the name of the Great Spirit and His love.

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Filled with the desire to serve, we seek to reveal those laws and that power which will show your world how to save itself. And those who are steeped in the ignorance of spiritual blindness, and who surround themselves with ceremony and ritual, and at the same time deny the power of the Great Spirit to descend today, must pay the price. We are the friends of all who seek to serve. We are the enemies only of those who seek to destroy. We come on wings of love and service ready to help wherever we can. That is the great task that we all have to perform. Your world pays too much attention to old fables because they are old. Truth and age do not always march together. I know it is difficult to surrender the dearly held beliefs learned in the days of childhood, but when the soul becomes free it must discard all that reason rejects. How many are prepared to do that? It does not occur to many people to test their beliefs by reason, said a sitter. So, they prefer the shelter of that which they have known for so long rather than journey into the speculative unknown, the guide remarked. And remember, also, your world does not acclaim its prisoners with much applause. It usually condemns them. Another sitter wanted to know why so much was said about a spirit plan to help the world, and yet we see such little apparent result of it? You do not see the results of a plan, said the guide, because you look at these things with the eyes of matter. You judge progress in relation to your own short span of life, but we see progress because we look at things from another plane. We see the spread of knowledge, a greater understanding of spiritual things, a rise of tolerance, an increase of good will, a breaking down of barriers of ignorance and superstition and fear and spiritual slavery. It is not as if there were to be a sudden revolution. That could never happen, because all spiritual growth must be slow and progressive. Do not think that there is need for despair. There is on one hand - when you see the growing masses of materialistic forces - but on the other hand there is growing hope as the light of spiritual truth penetrates the fog of materialistic selfishness. And, as long as knowledge spreads, truth will be victorious. That is why our message is so important. It is not for us - it is for you. It is we who strive to serve you, to make your world realize the price it must pay for - 53 -

its selfishness, for its wanton ignorance, its deliberate cruelty. We strive to serve you, to help you, because we love you. We are not evil spirits, seeking to lure you on to paths of destruction. We do not seek to make you debase yourselves, to practice cruelty or sin. Rather do we strive to make you realize the divinity that is yours, the powers of the Great Spirit that you possess, how you can practice the law of service and help the Plan of the Great Spirit. At a different gathering the guide was asked if it would be a good thing if our present civilization were destroyed. It is much better for your civilization to be saved, even in spite of itself, was the spirit sage’s reply. Don’t you think it has gone so far wrong that it would be better to start all over again? The sitter persisted. So, because the light of spiritual truth is breaking in upon your world, said Silver Birch. Where there are channels for the power of the spirit to penetrate, so there comes to you that energy that enables your world to exist. Your world must realize that it depends for its existence upon the reservoir of spirit. Another sitter suggested that Silver Birch was rather harsh in his declaration that the sacrifices of those killed in the war were all in vain. He thought it would hurt many people to be told that. Sometimes stark truth is bitter and hurts, said the guide, but, because it is true, it will do good. But did not any good at all come out of their sacrifices? the sitter said. I can see none, answered Silver Birch. Your world of matter is nearer chaos today, and is more filled with destruction, than it was when your Great Warbegan. Can so much heroism be spent in vain? the sitter queried. Is there no spiritual repercussion? There is on the part of the individuals who made the sacrifice, because their motive was good, the spirit guide replied. But do not forget that your world has betrayed them. It has made their sacrifice pointless, because it has continued in its materialism.

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Is it of any use that these Armistice services should go on, year after year? asked another sitter. It is better to remember those you call dead for two minutes than not to think of them at all, added the guide. But I do not see what good can come when you celebrate the Armistice with a display of military might, with rifles and bayonets, with soldiers, with the firing of maroons and with all that comes with war. Could you not have an Armistice that was a spiritual service Are you in favor of the continuance of Spiritualist services of remembrance on that date? was another point put to him. Wherever truth is expressed good is done, if speeches are given as an incentive to service. Vain speeches that lead to nothing are valueless. It is not sufficient to have speeches, and for audiences to be smugly satisfied with the feeling that they are in favor of peace. I want them active. I want them serving. I want them uplifting the weak. I want them healing the sick. I want them comforting the mourner. I want them sheltering the homeless. I want them to put an end to all the abuses that are a blot on your world of matter. Only through service can peace come. It will not come until all are imbued with the ideals of service, until all practices service. At the same circle gathering the guide was asked if he agreed with the Pacifist movement which today is probably stronger than ever before. I belong to no party, he replied. I wear no label. I see service, motive. Do not be confused with titles. Ask what is the aim, what is the desire, because there are men of honesty and good intent even in opposing camps. The teaching that we have to give you is very simple, but it requires courage to put it into practice. Whenever a start is made, whenever there is the determination that comes with knowledge of the spirit and the truths of the spirit, whenever service and not selfishness is applied to all the affairs of everyday life in the world. It will not come through any party, but through the children of the Great Spirit, who, realizing these things are true, apply them in their lives, in their politics, in their factories, in their governments, in their international transactions. We can enunciate principles that we know are founded on truth, and tell you with certainty that their application will bring results. You are in the realm of matter. Yours is the responsibility. We can only strive to guide you, with all our

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love and helpfulness, and co-operate with you whenever your feet are on the right paths .... So many in your world cannot get out of the groove in which they live. Sometimes the groove is religious, sometimes it is political, sometimes it is a self-made prison that has no reality beyond the imagination of its creator. Learn to be free. Do not imprison yourself. Do not hedge yourself around and refuse to allow new inspiration to come to you. Truth is a constant search. Its boundaries are ever widening, for as the soul evolves the mind responds. How can one become free? asked a sitter. You are never completely free, because the measure of your freedom is related to the growth of your soul, said the guide. You become free when you realize there is no limitation to knowledge, truth, wisdom, growth. You become free when you discard at once that which you know in your heart is false, that which reason rejects, because your intelligence cries out in revolt. You become free when you are not afraid to discard error in the face of new light. But how many are prepared to do that? One present suggested that sometimes economic conditions prevented people from becoming free. So, for they cannot imprison the mind though they can imprison the body, said Silver Birch. You imprison your own minds. There is knowledge for all when you are ready to seek knowledge, but you must journey on the great adventure. You must be prepared to start on a search where even sometimes the boundaries are not known, sometimes be prepared for hazards and dangers, sometimes be prepared to walk in uncharted territory, yet always prepared to follow truth wherever she leads and to reject all that is false, no matter how old it may be.

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All Truth is Wonderful Apart from a short break in the summer, in latter years the circle met monthly. The guide’s medium, Maurice Barbanell, would drive home after a day’s work at psychic News - he was the paper’s founder and editor - greet guests invited to attend and settle comfortable in a settee whilst those present chatted quietly until Silver Birch manifested. So it was that for many decades Silver Birch imparted his words of wisdom in a small flat in a pleasant part of London whilst buses and taxis took weary workers home. For unknown to them, and those walking in the tree-lined street outside, one whom the world regards as dead offered wise counsel as the Seen and Unseen temporarily merged. To you, this is a little room, said Silver Birch. To us, it is a grand temple. These little walls have vanished. There is radiance, illumination dazzling in its brilliance. Hundreds upon hundreds are assembled here, each with a mission to perform; some to serve, some to be served. That vast concourse belongs to all peoples and nations, to the present and to the past. There are prophets, seers, sages, wise men of the East and the West, of high and low estate, philosophers of Greece and Rome, Syria, Chaldea, Persia and Babylon, mingled with those of later generations from Italy, France and Germany. They exchange their knowledge and focus it all so that it shall be at your service. That is only one fragment of what is happening. There are your own, those you know and the many whom you do not know in your material consciousness but whom you do know in that larger consciousness in which you dwell for fleeting moments. Earlier in the sitting, after Silver Birch had given some information regarding healing, one of the sitters remarked, That is a wonderful truth. All truth is wonderful, replied the guide. It is error that is so foolish. And yet there are so many who would rather cling to error, because they are familiar with error, even though they know it is error, rather than seek the strange landmarks of wonderful truth. They would rather be weak when they could be strong, they would rather dwell in darkness with undisturbed faith built on error than seek the light. The

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path of the truth-seeker is not an easy one, for the pioneer does not achieve truth with ease. The things that are most valuable and most highly priced are not lightly earned, but only through perplexity and doubt, with earnestness, with reverence, with the desire to know as your motto, can you achieve those truths which mean so much. But always remember this also. The soul must be prepared. No truth comes to you until the soul has earned that truth. Till then, your efforts are in vain, for you are not ready and equipped. That is what was meant by casting pearls before swine. Then a sitter mentioned an effort to revise the Bible that seemed foredoomed for failure. Let them try, said the guide. Encourage all those who are on the side of opposing vested interest. Let this new spirit of reform permeate where it can. Sot all is achieved in a blinding flash of revelation. Sometimes another method has to be employed - the little drops of water that drip away on the stone until they wear it away. Burs is a great task. We do not seek to perform wonders that will enable ignorance to stare us with mouth agape and with wide-eyed astonishment. We do not seek to convert masses in one instantaneous revelation. Burs is the constant fight against selfishness, self-interest, the powers that belong to all the darkness of life. Prejudice, superstition, error, jealous, greed, avarice, hate - against these we are at war. We seek to advance our cause wherever we can, wherever we find receptive hearts, receptive minds, receptive souls. For years it was with difficulty that we labored. The opposition seemed so gigantic, the obstacles insuperable, yet we toiled on unceasingly, knowing always that with the power of the Great Spirit behind us and with a few faithful, valiant hearts to co-operate with us, we could not fail. You who live today can see the fruits of nearly a century of arduous toil. All this is as naught compared with what shall be achieved, for the tide has turned. Now we are marching forward to victory and nothing can stop us .... Must as calmly, yet as emphatically, do we declare we are marching forward to victory. Light triumphs over darkness, knowledge defeats ignorance, joy replaces sorrow and truth is the victor. - 58 -

Then obviously addressing Spiritualists the world over, the guide said: I want you who are engaged in this task to know always that the power behind you desires to serve you as you serve others. How I wish that the blinkers were removed from your eyes, so that you could see. How I wish that you could know as I know. You would never despair. Gloom would find not even a tarrying place in your beings, for you would realize the strength that surrounds you. Giving a hint of the system used on the Other Side to communicate inspiration from the higher planes, Silver Birch explained that ours is an ascending ladder. Each rung is joined to the one above, he went on, so that the lowliest in your world of matter has access to the highest in the realm of spirit. The ladder of Jacob was not a figment of the imagination, but the symbol of an eternal reality, for up that ladder every soul can climb, rung by rung. From earth to heaven it ranges, supported always by the power of the Great Spirit. The guide devoted this particular sitting to conversation more personal to the sitters than was his usual custom. He had been discussing difficulties before he uttered the following benediction which is applicable to all: When shadows cross your path, remember they are but shadows, not reality. When clouds obscure the sun, remember they are but clouds. When beset by trial and difficulty, remember these are but birds of passage that will continue their flight when they have but rested for a short while. The knowledge that you all possess is more priceless than all the treasures of the world of matter. We do not bring you gold or silver, diamonds or precious jewels. Rather do we seek to bring the priceless jewels of the spirit, the greatest treasures that you can have. prize them. Put them in a setting of love and realize that these are the gifts that the Great Spirit bestows you with loving care and divine affection. Look up always, not down. Realize that the mighty and majestic power which brought you into being and breathed into you the life-giving essence of its own spirit will uphold and sustain you day by day. Incline your hearts to His, subdue your souls to His, fill your minds with the wisdom that comes from His inexhaustible reservoir and know that those who

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seek to give service and labor for the upliftment of the weak, the fallen and the needy are protected by the mantle of the spirit. Go forward, steady and sure in the knowledge which is yours. Use it wisely and well. Remember your responsibilities as instruments of the Great Spirit, who in our many ways we all seek to service, so as to hear His benediction, Well done, good and faithful servant, may the Great Spirit bless you all. The guide assured those in attendance, You will all live after you have died, and you will not realize until then what it is to live or to feel the real glory of life untrammeled, free to rejoice in liberty of spirit which your imprisoned souls cannot understand today. How can a bird which has never been outside the cage realize what it is to fly from branch to branch, to have no prison bars? Why was the soul imprisoned in the body at all? asked one of the sitters. Must as the seed is put into darkness, there to gain strength before it can burst into life, the seed of human life is put into darkness to obtain the strength of human experience before it can burst into the life of the spirit, was the reply. All the experiences of human life are part of the great scheme. Those experiences which you like least of all - the sadness, the bitterness, the tears, the disappointments, the suffering and the pain - these are very valuable for your souls. But you cannot realize that at the time. It is only when you can look back on the whole, and not judge by the part, that you can get a clear picture of the values of life. Through all your adversities the character is tried. Through tears and sorrow the soul is strengthened. We look at life not through physical eyes but with the knowledge of spirit life, where the true balance is struck. Those who live wisely are the ones who seek to turn all experiences into advantage to their souls, who do not try to flee from trial and temptation but seek to use the innermost strength to face difficulties, for it is in that spirit that character is evolved and strengthened. How very simple are these great truths, so simple that they are beyond many of your intellectuals. Commenting on the fact that the circle was then composed mostly of young people, Silver Birch said, I rejoice that, whilst you have so many years of physical life in front of you, you are enabled to appreciate the realities of spiritual truth.

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We regard it as a great privilege, remarked one of the regular sitters. And as a responsibility, said the guide. That is the price of all knowledge. You all have the greatest privilege in the world of matter, the privilege of being able to use your knowledge for service. When all the things that are counted great in your world of matter have passed away, the service that you have rendered to one another will yield your eternal progress. We preach the religion of service, service, service, not of creeds, not of rituals, not of doctrines - unless they make you serve. Ceremony, observances, these are unimportant. What does count is that you exercise your spirit - the Great Spirit that is within you. What is your definition of religion? asked another circle member. To me, it means but one thing, said Silver Birch. To serve the Great Spirit by serving His children. This guide gave the complete answer to those who criticize Spiritualists for disturbing the dead and, they say, dragging them back unwillingly to talk to us. I cannot make you realize the pleasure it gives me to be able to talk with you through this medium, he said. To be with you in the spirit is no new experience for me, but to talk with you face to face makes me very happy. Always remember, I am here to serve you. I am your friend, unseen perhaps, but your willing servant. If at any time I can be of service, you call on me. You disturb the dead! One sitter asked about an experience that had befallen a relative of hers. He wondered whether it was an influence that was good or evil. You can all banish from your minds the thought that anything that is unenlightened - or, as you would say, evil - can ever touch you, the guide said. You live and move under the protection of the Great Spirit and His laws. If there is no evil in your hearts, then only good can reach you, for only good can dwell where goodness reigns. None but the servants of the Great Spirit come into your presence. You need have no fears. The power which envelops you, the power which supports and seeks to guide you and inspire you is the power that emanates from the Great Spirit of all. That power can sustain you in all your trials and difficulties. That power can change your storms into sunshine, and bring you out of the darkness of despair into the light of knowledge. Your feet are set on pathways of progress. There is no need for fear ....

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Much that is regarded as important in your world is but a veneer that has only a passing value. True education is the growth of the soul, continued the guide. You become educated as your soul-powers reach out and unfold their latent divinity. The mere acquisition of knowledge is of little value, and might be a very selfish pursuit unless the knowledge is acquired to be of service to others. Do not judge by the outer semblance. The difference between us always is that you judge from the outer manifestation while we who see with the eyes of the spirit see motive and purpose, which are more important. Strive to see the eternal realities behind the passing phases. Rank, title, profession or calling, the color of skins - what are these in the sight of the Great Spirit? True wealth and true nobility are of the soul, the spirit, the mind, for these are the eternal realities. The Nazarene taught the same things: The kingdom of heaven is within Lay not up for yourself treasures on earth where moth and rust doth corrupt. We teach the same truth for truth is truth and eternal principles cannot change. I know it is hard for you who are encased in matter to think in terms of spiritual reality, but that is the purpose of your return, to try and help you to adjust yourselves to get the true focus and perspective of life. Remember that your world is but an infinitesimal fragment of your eternal lives. Do not confuse the shadows with the reality. Silver Birch reminded the circle that, though they had grown accustom to the teachings that he brought, to others - some of them very weary, some of them sick at heart, some of them perplexed and full of doubt - the spirit message came as a breath of sweet, fresh, clean air that blows away the lingering cobwebs and enables the mind to become invigorated. Sometimes the soul has to travel through much perplexity and doubt, through much sadness, weariness and disillusionment before it is ready for the light of spiritual truth, he continued. Bur work is spreading - that much I know and can say with certainty. That is why I always stress the note of optimism and tell you we are marching forward to victory.

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Like the Mighty Raging Winds A Member of Parliament (MP), who lost his wife a few years previously and was seeking evidence of her survival, attended one sitting and had a long and helpful talk with Silver Birch. The MP performed much work in connection with preventing suffering to animals. He went away with a sense of upliftment after being urged to continue his services for reform. In your world of matter there is little desire for an understanding of spiritual truths, except among the few of discernment, until sorrow comes, Silver Birch told him. But how can I have that discernment? asked the guest. It is not easy, confessed the guide. You must satisfy yourself, as you have striven to do, that we who speak to you by this and other means are what we claim to be. We can only prove it by conforming to the standard of evidence that your world of matter demands. You must seek that evidence, as you have been seeking it, and judge and weigh with honest criticism what it is that is given to you. If you allow the door to be kept open and yourself provide no unreasoning skepticism, you make the channel easy. What I simply crave for, the MP said, is definite knowledge that those who have left this sphere are still living and are in touch with one and are endeavoring to influence one. What must I do to acquire that knowledge? You must use a medium who is better than mine at receiving all those vibrations which will bring you the wholehearted evidence that you require. It is not your soul that demands the knowledge. It is your mind which is agitating in uncertainty. Then is there any means whereby I can place my mind more in conscious touch with my soul? That is a question of unfoldment. That is a question of learning how to tune in to the realm of spirit, so that those finer vibrations can become clearer to you. How does one tune in? the visitor wanted to know. The activity of your world is often the silence of ours, but the silence of your world is the activity of ours, explained Silver Birch. Retire into the silence and

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learn to be still, passive. Wait, and the manifestation of the spirit can reveal itself. Is there any means whereby I can decide whether particular thoughts that enter my mind come from my side or yours? It is all a matter of learning how to have control over the mind so that it can be still and be tuned in, so that instead of being a wanderer it can be placed under control by yourself, so that, held in perfect silence, it may respond to the higher vibrations. That is why intuition comes in a flash - because our vibration is quick and speedy and subtle. The thoughts from your world of matter are slow, they are sluggish, they are heavy. Does that apply to the most exalted soul on this plane at the moment? asked the sitter. Yes, it applies to every soul. Remember this, you are twofold in nature. There is the ancestry of the animal and the portion of the Great Spirit constantly at war within your being, and there is yourself, you, with the free will to accomplish your evolution. You have to subdue the long line of animal that is part of your evolution and you have to learn to allow the Great Spirit that is latent to unfold itself. The Great Spirit is within every human being, within every facet of life, for all is the Great Spirit and the Great Spirit is all. Within some beings the Great Spirit only stirs quietly, like the gentle zephyr. In others the Great Spirit is like the mighty raging wind. It is all a question of development. The Great Spirit has stirred within your soul and, touched by sorrow, the Great Spirit within you is striving to express itself still more. That is why you are on your quest. That is why you will continue to search, because your feet are now on the road that leads to spiritual truths. Do you mean that desire is the first step in development? queried the sitter. Yes, said Silver Birch. First comes the desire to know, in humility, in earnestness, in reverence, and with that desire the determination to use that knowledge not only for bringing certainty to yourself, but to be of service to others. You desire to serve and you have striven to serve, and there are many who have upheld you for many years when your heart has been weary and your soul has grown tired in the fight and you have wondered whether it would not be best to retire from the scenes of activity and to seek in quietude those pleasures, aesthetic pleasures, that you think would bring you happiness. But the restlessness of the stirring Great Spirit within you and the inspiration from my world have encouraged you to go on with your fight to help those less fortunate than yourself. - 64 -

Silver Birch told the visiting MP of the guides who were assisting him from the spirit world, and went on: I said that to you to make you realize the love that comes to you from our world. If all of you who sought to serve realized the great wealth of love and power that surged round you and knew how you were upheld and encouraged and enthused and sustained in all your labors, you would fight even with greater ardor and zeal and intensity. Not one effort to serve has ever been in vain. Though often misunderstood, misinterpreted and ridiculed by those who should have been your friends and occasionally betrayed by those whom you have trusted, your service will live on. What advice have you to give me? asked the sitter. You do not require detailed advice, answered Silver Birch. You are doing greater work than you know. When those who are engaged in service say to me, What can I do? my heart is full of joy, for it is a recognition that even as they render service they strive to give greater service. Continue to help the weak and the helpless, to give strength to those who need it, light to those in darkness, a helping hand to the lame and the struggling. Fight to abolish all cruelty, especially that cruelty that horrifies your soul - the cruelty to mankind’s greatest friends, the world of animals. Then Silver Birch spoke of the difficulty experienced by guides in expressing themselves in earthly activities. They have to register in the world of matter, he said, and that is not easy, for you know the vibrations that come to us from your world are not all that they should be. There is so much darkness where there should be light, so much ignorance where there should be knowledge, so much foolishness where there should be wisdom, so much hunger where there should be plenty, so much misery where there should be happiness, so many hovels where there should be fit habitations for all, so much cruelty where there should be kindness, so much hate where there should be love. It is only through a few instruments that the power of the spirit can express itself, but the number is constantly increasing and the tide turns in our favor. It was when sorrow came that your soul was touched, Silver Birch reminded the sitter. Do you think that that sorrow was brought for a purpose? the MP asked. From the greatest sorrow comes the greatest knowledge, was the reply. All life is compensation, from shadow into sunshine, from storm into refuge. Light and dark, storm and shine, wind and silence - these are all but reflections of - 65 -

the Great Spirit. The Great Spirit is in every facet of life. Because of shadow you appreciate sunshine. Because of struggle you appreciate peace. Life is enjoyed through comparisons. The soul finds its own in the bitter crucible of experience, trial and suffering and emerges purified, strengthened, touched, ready for an understanding of life’s greater purpose and meaning. Then is suffering brought to one deliberately, for the purpose of enabling one to realize what it is necessary to have for one’s unfoldment? - Yes, for the soul has to have all varieties of experience before it can unfold the highest. The soul is eternal and carries with it the result of every thought, of every spoken word, of every deed, and you are what you have made yourself second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year. You achieve your own growth and all actions that you perform determine the state of your evolution. No one else accomplishes that growth for you. Do you differentiate between deliberate and automatic actions? the guest next asked. That which is done automatically does not mean that the law of cause and effect has ceased to operate. It only stresses that it is in existence. You perform deeds because of what you are. - Then you would say that one is what one is as a consequence of what one has done in that past on this sphere? Yes, you are what you are because of what you have done and you will be what you will be because of what you are now. The law of cause and effect operates in unbroken, perfect sequence, and the law of the Great Spirit is so perfect in its operation that it never fails. Though the children of the Great Spirit may cheat the laws of state, none can evade the operations of natural law, for the soul carries with it its eternal registration of what it has accomplished and you are known for what you are, not for what you are not or what you pretend to be. Don’t you think that all men realize when they are wrong? asked the MP. So. Sometimes a man is deaf to the voice of conscience, his heart is hardened, his soul has become covered up and the life force of the Great Spirit is being choked. Men do not always realize that they are wrong. If they did, there would be no war in your world of matter, there would be no cruelty, no starvation. There would not be so much disease and there would not be an excess of plenty while others starved. How can one alter that? - By you and I and all of us being determined that the inequalities of selfish materialism shall be vanquished and the bounty of - 66 -

the Great Spirit made available to all His children, that disease and slums, and ill-health and poverty, and all those things which restrict the human soul and body shall be driven from the face of the world of matter, because we know that they are wrong. We must make the Great Spirit within each person so responsive that it will know what it has to be before it leaves your world of matter. Bearing in mind that the MP - like many Spiritualists - was involved in animal welfare, it is apposite to feature what the guide once said about spirit help for reformers. He told his circle: What we preach fits in with all the noble and elevated ideas that have come to the vision of all the reformers, all the saints, all the seers and all the idealists who have striven in every age to render service. Because they were great souls, their spiritual eyes caught glimpses of the life that could be, and that vision of beauty sustained them in all their adversity and struggle. They realized the spirit plan that, one day, will be put into practice, and so they strove to raise up the children of matter, to serve. Though they were vilified, though they were opposed and ridiculed by those they came to help, their work lived on, even as the work that is being done today in countless small temples, such as this, will live on, though many of the people will be forgotten. The mighty power of the Spirit has been launched once again in your world of matter, and the children of matter do not possess the power to stem that mighty tide. Your world thinks it solves its problems by the shedding of blood. But no problem was ever solved in that way, for bloodshed is needless and leads nowhere. Why cannot they use the reason which the Great Spirit has given them? Why do they think that their only solution must be to kill as many as possible, that the one who is the greatest killer is accounted the victor? It is a strange world you live in.

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As Your Soul Unfolds Sadly, Silver Birch never revealed his true identity. What we do know is that he was certainly an exalted spirit being who merely used the astral body of a North American Indian in order to communicate. Once, however, he explained that when on earth I venerated many gods. At the sitting in question the guide began by saying that some said a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Sometimes a lot of knowledge can be very dangerous, especially if people learn the wrong things. When their learning fills their brains, it does not give their minds a chance to operate through the grey matter. I feel sorry for those men of God who have so much to unlearn. They have built a structure based on shifting sands and they try to defend their sandy castles against the onslaught of spirit truths. They have built falsely. They have surrounded the Nazarene with fable. They have magnified him into the Great Spirit of Life and, because the foundation is a faulty one, they have gradually to destroy it. As they destroy, fear strikes their hearts. They think there can be nothing left at all, whereas the truth is that, if they had built on the foundation of fact, of natural law, there would be nothing to destroy. That is why we have come back to your world - to ask you to give no obedience to any one man, to any one book, to any one church, to any leader, to any being whether in the world of matter or in the world of spirit, but only to learn obedience to the laws of the Great Spirit, for they alone are infallible and unerringly right. That is why we preach the natural laws, and the natural laws only. If you call that Spiritualism it does not matter, as long as what you understand embraces the natural laws of the Great Spirit and their operation throughout all the spheres of life, whether life that is visible to you or life as it is known in the planes of spirit. Your world has set its store by leaders, and has magnified them out of their true importance, and so it has created difficulties of theology - difficulties with scientists, with philosophers and with all those honest people who want their minds to be free and who cannot accept anything which makes their reason revolt. - 68 -

That is why we emphasize the laws of the Great Spirit, for the true understanding of these laws harmonizes all knowledge. They cannot in any way cause the minds of scientists, philosophers, free-thinkers or anybody to revolt, for they are founded upon eternal, unalterable, immutable operations of the Great Spirit. You see the wisdom of the counsel that is given to us to express. As your world grows in wisdom and understanding, its people will learn to regulate their lives according to the laws of the Great Spirit. They will learn to have obedience to the Law. They will learn that all the misery and the starvation, the suffering and the heartbreaks that come through your worldly conditions are all caused because the law is not obeyed. When the fuller understanding comes, there will be swept away all the hideous growths in the garden of the Great Spirit that prevent its beauty being shown to every one of His children. With that aim we strive, not only to make the souls of mankind free, not only to liberate their minds, but to give their bodies of matter a chance to live in harmony with the laws of the Great Spirit. Then Silver Birch gave an indication of the progress that he has had to make since leaving the earth .... nearly 3, 000 years ago. It took me many years to learn to think like that, he said, nor in my days on earth I venerated many gods. I had to learn that there is only one Great Spirit, Who has provided eternal laws for the control of every phase of life throughout the boundless universe. As our teaching grows in your world, it will mean the end of all separateness between people. It will mean the end of national barriers. It will mean the end of race distinctions, class distinctions, color distinctions and all the distinctions between churches and chapels, temples, mosques and synagogues, for gradually all will learn that they have a part of the Great Spirit’s truth and that the part enshrined in the heart of every other religion in no way contradicts that portion which is precious to them. So, out of the apparent confusion, the divine pattern will take its shape and harmony and peace will come. I tell you these things, so that you can understand part of the great Plan, the part that we who return from the world of spirit play in it, and the part that each one of you must play in it before your earthly course is run.

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What is important is the unfolding of your own soul’s power, for, as you sit here week after week, so you are attuning yourselves to higher vibrations and becoming more accessible to the wisdom of the ages, which, although it has evolved and is evolving, is always waiting to pour itself down into your world of matter, to obey the law of service. But it must find instruments attuned to its vibrations. And, as your souls unfold and you rise higher and higher in the scale of vibrations, so you come into closer touch with higher and greater spiritual forces, that are not seen or heard but which belong to the eternal realities of the Spirit. That is the reality of your lives. So much of your time is spent in chasing the shadows, in trying to capture the illusion, in trying to secure the ephemeral. In silence, in harmony and in love, your souls unfold all the time. Though it may be slow, it is sure and certain. The Great Spirit that is within each one of you unfolds and evolves, and you are able to express more and more of its divinity, because you have all met together in one place and with one accord. The Nazarene told you, many years ago, that, where two or three are gathered together, there is the Great Spirit to pour down His blessing. We teach the same truths, but they reject us. Truths do not change. Men’s minds change, but truth is constant because it is based upon knowledge, and knowledge comes from the Great Spirit. He is the centre and the source of all inspiration. It is all so simple and so easy to understand, but your world has made it so very difficult. Silver Birch referred to the Nazarene again before attending another spiritworld conference. He spoke of the joys that belong to greater spheres and the radiant beings who are behind this great work of ours, the teachers and the leaders of many nations who, through centuries of progress and unfoldment, have now earned the right to direct us all. More than all these things, he added, I wish that you could see and hear the Nazarene and feel that great love as he encourages us in our missions, as he expresses his knowledge of all that has been done and urges us to go forward with new strength, with new hope, with new vision and with new purpose. He is not the Nazarene of the Churches - exalted into a deified place - but a great spirit who strives still to serve through many instruments. For a short time I shall be in the spheres where I lived for many years, to feel once again that vitalizing power of the spirit, so invigorating in its strength, - 70 -

so beautiful in all its fullness, making you realize what life is when you are able to experience it in the higher realms of spirit. We speak with all humility and with no pride at all....... If all the beautiful paintings of the world, all the inspired visions and all the great artistry that you have ever heard of in your world of matter and all the deepest and greatest beauties of nature were all combined into one whole object it would be but a very pale reflection of life in the higher regions. Silver Birch mentioned the recompense for his work, how he saw the increasing spread of our knowledge and realized that the mission of the guides was succeeding in many places and how we are able to transmit the truths which have been so long forgotten and are now being restored in your midst. I am proud that because of our efforts we have accomplished so much throughout the world of matter ...... Hearts that were once sad are now a little more joyful. Light has pierced the gloom of darkness. Now, there is a little more knowledge where before there was ignorance. We have aided those who have become faint-hearted, given strength to those who were weary, guided those who had lost their way and acted as an incentive to those who strive to work for their fellows, giving them the realization that behind them there is a mighty host of spirit spurring them on in all their endeavors for the Great Spirit and His children. And I am also happy that I have been able to bring to you some of those you love and who love you, so that you may realize more than you ever did before that you have never lost them, that death does not divide but brings together those whom love and affection and friendship have made one in heart and soul. I wish you could see the extent of our influence. We have helped to break barriers, to remove obstacles and to bring knowledge. These are the things your world needs, the simple truths that will enable spiritual, mental and material freedom to come to your world. As you know, we live only to serve, for through service and service alone can your world be saved from itself ...... Do not think only in terms of the power of the Spirit in the past. Remember that the power which operated through the Nazarene is operating once again. Must as those who were the leaders of the churches in that time rejected that power of the spirit, and said it was of the Devil, so once again they reject the same power of the Spirit as it operates today.

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The splendor of the Nazarene does not belong only to the past, but to the present. Where do you think he is today? Do you think the story of his life ended in Jerusalem? Where do you think his great spirit would be today, with your world of matter full of distress, trouble and bitterness? Those who deny us and say we preach the gospel of darkness are in line with the same people who, in the days gone by, made the same accusation against the Nazarene. We come with the same power of the Great Spirit, bringing the same manifestations of the Spirit, the same message, comfort the mourner, heal the sick, bring light to those who are in darkness, health to the afflicted, strength to the weary, knowledge to the ignorant. We are all the servants of the Great Spirit. Some of us have evolved a little higher. Because of that, we return to give service, for service is the law of life. Where there is no service, there is desolation. Where there is service, there is peace and happiness. Your world must build a new system of life with service to one another. It is all very simple, but they make it so hard. Answering another point raised at a different home circle meeting, the guide stated: Yours is a strange world, and when you view it with eyes that do not belong to matter you marvel at the folly of the people who live in it. They set such store over their puny possessions, which crumble into the dust, and they neglect the priceless treasures of the Spirit which are eternal. They have no understanding of spiritual values. They live for the moment, for the fleeting pleasures and the joys, and their souls, so covered over with material desires, seldom are able to express the divinity that is within. And yet, in your world, they are counted as intelligent because they have accumulated temporary possessions. Who is the intelligent one - the man who strives to build that which must perish, or the one who strives to build that which will endure? Mesus said that, commented one of the sitters, recalling the parable of the houses built on sand and on rock. Yes, was the reply, he also said something about treasures in heaven, where the moth and the rust cannot corrupt. But your world has forgotten the Nazarene, and those who profess to serve him have themselves built material possessions and set store by the things of matter.

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Sot all of them, for here and there a mighty urge to serve fires with burning zeal the soul that is ready to uplift others, not for self but only for another. How do the people on your side pour the healing spirit through a healer? was the next question. Is it because he has a different kind of organism from other people? Silver Birch, in replying, pointed out that he was only referring to spiritual healers as apart from those who practice magnetic and other forms. You all have qualities of soul, he said, and these qualities are nearer expression in some people than they are in others. As you strive for unfoldment, that quality, the psyche, the spiritual, call it what you will, unfolds and there is a closer co-operation between the instrument and the guides who work with him. The attunement is higher, finer and closer. The rays blend into one state of beauteous harmony and, when that stage reaches its zenith, the whole band of my world and the instrument of yours become as one in unity. The nearer you are to that state of achievement, the higher and the greater and more powerful rays that belong to our spheres can be used through the band of guides and the instrument.

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The Epitome of Perfect Love Though in recent years Silver Birch made a cassette recording - it has been heard by countless folk in countless lands -- turning the clock back ever further the guide once recorded his voice onto a gramophone record. Sadly the first record he made was a failure, from a reproduction point of view, because the microphone was placed too far away. The guide made no complaint. Instead, he started straight away on another record. What shall I talk about? he said when was asked to make a second disc. His first talk had been one of comfort to mourners. Why not talk about the new world? he was asked. Without hesitation, Silver Birch started a talk on the new world - which was of exactly the right length for the record which is no longer available. That was the remarkable aspect about every spirit address - there were four altogether, two prayers and two talks. They were all of exactly the right length! So that the guide would know when to start recording and when to finish, it was arranged that a sitter should count up to nine then the apparatus was switched on and the guide started to talk. Half a minute before the recording was due to finish, the medium was touched -- and the guide had so arranged everything that he finished in each case almost on the last second. And yet, he said, it was not rehearsed. I pray to the Great White Spirit of life, Silver Birch began, making the first record, Thou Who art the King of kings, the divine Architect, the infinite Intelligence behind perfect law. Thou art omniscient, omnipotent. Thou art ever present, for Thy spirit fills the whole universe and all is a reflection of Thee. But Thy spirit is shown in the lives of those who strive to render service, for there Thy divinity finds its fullest expression, as reaching out they fight all vested interest, all hatred, all cruelty, all superstition and all the ignorance that belongs to the darkness. We pay tribute to Thee Who art the epitome of perfect love and wisdom because we seek to reveal Thee as Thou art in all Thy majesty, for Thou hast been misinterpreted through the ages, except by a few who possessed the open vision and the clear-seeing eye. Thou art not a despotic, vindictive, jealous tyrant. Thou art the Great Spirit of all life, for Thy spirit is within every child in the universe and they are linked with Thee throughout all eternity. - 74 -

Because of Thy spirit they live; because of Thy spirit they exist in the world beyond death. During the last half-minute, it appeared to sitters that the guide would not finish in time. That half-minute seemed almost as long as the previous two and a half minutes since the recording began. But Silver Birch knew how much he could say in the time! Another disc was put on the machine, the sitter counted up to nine and I whom you call Silver Birch desire to send a message to those whose eyes are filled with tears and whose hearts are heavy with sadness because they mourn the ones they love, whom they think death has robbed them of their presence. I who have lived in the world of spirit for many years wish to tell them that death cannot divide those whom love has joined. Love breaks all barriers; love always findeth its own. Do not weep because the one you love is taken from a world of cruelty, of misunderstanding, of ignorance, into a larger life where all its innate qualities can find richer expression. Do not be bitter because the Great Spirit has transplanted a flower from your garden into His, where it can shed a greater fragrance, freed from all the limitations and restrictions of your world. Try to understand that death is part of the law of life, for life and death are both servants of the Great Spirit, and both are used to teach His laws to those who do not yet properly understand them. Dry your tears. Your sorrow should not be, for the one you love is always close to you. Death cannot destroy love; love is infinite as the Great Spirit is infinite too. Shall we play it over to you? asked one of the recorders. We can play it once without hurting it for reproduction. If it can only be played once, I would rather you did not play it now but waited until my medium comes out of trance, so that he can hear it too, said the guide, not wishing to prevent his medium from hearing the voice. Well, we can play it twice without damaging it, said the recorder. Then it was realized the voice was too faint. The guide’s voice is much lower than the medium’s and did not register so well. In a test made earlier in the evening, the microphone was placed in the best position to record the medium’s voice. Can you repeat what was said? someone asked. So, that is not possible, said Silver Birch. But I will start again. So the other record was started -- and the guide prayed: I pray to the Great White Spirit. Oh, Great White Spirit, Thou Who art the divine Architect, Thou Who art the King of all kings, the infinite Intelligence behind all life, we seek to reveal Thee as Thou art -- perfect law. Thou hast been misunderstood and misinterpreted throughout the ages. Men have - 75 -

thought of Thee as a cruel, bloodthirsty, vindictive, jealous tyrant, with partiality to those who made sacrifices to Thee. Men have approached Thee in fear and trembling, afraid of Thy wrath. We seek to reveal Thee as Thou art -- the epitome of perfect love and wisdom, for Thou dost desire to reveal Thyself through the operation of all Thy laws, so that Thy children may find in life its fullness, its richness and its plenteous bounty. We desire to bring into operation the laws that belong to Thy spiritual domain, so that they may inspire all people of good will to greater efforts and greater service, that they may free your world from all its inequalities, all its injustices and all that stands in the way of Thy kingdom of heaven being made manifest on earth. To that end we pray and labor. The second half of the second record was spoiled when Silver Birch made a mistake in a word -- he said service instead of surface. That spoils it, he remarked and waited for a new disc to be put on the machine before he started again. When all your world is full of darkness, he began without hesitation, and fear reigns in the heart of man, and the children of your world know not where to turn for guidance and comfort, we who live in the larger life and who can see beyond the confines of matter stress the note of confidence and tell you all is well. You are witnessing the birth of a new order and all around you are the signs that the old world, founded on selfishness, materialism, greed, avarice and cruelty, is dying. You who call yourselves Spiritualists are the custodians of a great truth, for you are the sentries guarding the outposts, helping to forge the new era. Think of yourselves as soldiers of the Great Spirit, fighting the greatest fight of all, for you are helping to vanquish all the forces that belong to the darkness of man’s ignorance and brought war, misery, chaos and bankruptcy to your world. You are helping to shape a new world in which all the children of the Great Spirit will share to fulfill the richness of the bounty He has freely given.

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The Divine Mission Silver Birch’s teachings, available in print for decades, have reached millions all over the world. After his customary invocation, Silver Birch explained his mission. I am very happy to come amongst you and to bring my love and greetings from the world of spirit. I am aware of the special purpose of our gathering tonight. So I thought it might be helpful if I would try to explain to those who will hear these words the purpose behind my mission and those of my colleagues who are animated by the same desire. To the uninitiated I would say I am a human being like yourselves. I have lived much longer than any of you who are listening to what I say. As a result of my experiences in realms far beyond your earth I have gained some knowledge of the Great Spirit you call God, and of the natural laws which have been devised to ensure that the will of the Great Spirit will and must ultimately prevail. What I have learnt as a result of my experiences I am willing to share with those who are ready to receive them because I think they may be of helpfulness to them. I am not in any way a deity. I am still very human, capable of error, weakness and imperfection. I have, like every one of you, a long, long way to go on the road to perfection. It is an infinite one. But, like others in my world, I was asked to retrace my steps so that I could offer some of the truth, the wisdom and the knowledge that we have gained, and share it with you. At the same time we would be able, with the aid of those who co-operate with us, to make available the supreme power of the spirit, which is responsible for all life despite its multitudinous forms, so that this power can stream through gifted individuals and serve its benign purpose. In olden days, when this power flowed, it performed certain remarkable phenomena which many today regard as miracles. I want to say that in the operation of natural law they cannot be suspended or abrogated, and must fulfill themselves in an ordered sequence as effect follows cause.

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Whatever has happened, however remarkable, stupefying, extraordinary or wonderful in days gone by, it was due to the operation of natural laws. These operate not only in the physical domain but also work ceaselessly in the spiritual realms. When conditions allow, the spiritual, psychic, astral and etheric laws can be brought into operation to perform what were regarded as miracles yesterday, but today are described as psychic phenomena produced through mediumship. A medium is one on whom there has been bestowed the gifts of the spirit which are ably described by the apostle Paul in your Bible. These gifts are divinely bestowed. Their recipients, as they unfold them, are able to be used as channels for the divine beneficence to flow through them. All the phenomena of mediumship are due to the operation of spirit power. Today you are witnessing exactly the same kind of manifestations that occurred in the lands which were called holy and regarded as sacred. The Great Spirit does not change; the natural laws to not alter. They are in operation now. Thus I, who once inhabited your world, am able to speak to you through a medium by utilizing the same power of the spirit. I want to explain also that we are part of a vast spirit organization. We are pursuing what I would like to describe as the overall master plan, which is designed to ensure that the power of the spirit will continue to express itself in your world and reach an ever increasing number of people. The object is to drive away their ignorance, error and superstition and to bring them into the radiant light of divine truth and knowledge so that they can begin to live and fulfill themselves as they should according to the purpose of their earthly incarnation. The power of the spirit has constantly flowed into your world from time immemorial; its descent, however, was temporary and sporadic. The wonders that were worked, the signs that were given, the same truths that were pronounced were each time made available to the people of that day. Then there was decay, tampering with the knowledge that had been revealed, for political, theological, and sometimes state purposes. Now, however, the power of the spirit, because of the overall plan to which I have referred, is here to stay in your world. Why? Because it is vitally necessary to do so. So many systems have failed to provide the direction which will enable the people who dwell on earth to find themselves, and to live according to ideals that will enable the divinity which

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gave them life to express itself. The spirit has to be made prominent in the lives of all who dwell on earth. It is a very dark world in which you live. It is full of turbulence, violence, greed, envy. Mammon is being worshipped instead of the Great Spirit. False idols are still the ones which are the subject of adoration. The evidence that is available to you will, if you are reasonable, convince you that life, because it is spiritual in essence, cannot end when death comes to the physical body. Matter is only the husk; the spirit is the reality. Matter exists only because spirit animates it. When spirit, the life force, withdraws, matter crumbles into dust. But the spirit, which is the individual, does not crumble into dust. The spirit is immortal; it cannot die. Death is its second birth. It first came when it was born into your world and began to manifest through a physical body. The second birth comes when the spirit says farewell to the physical body and continues in unbroken sequence its eternal path on the road of infinite progress. You cannot die. Life is deathless. So there is the evidence that you, an individual, immortal spirit, will continue after the death of your body. Everything that constitutes your individuality will persist. You will have consciousness, awareness, memory, the power to reason and to express love, for love is an aspect of the Great Sprit. Love in its highest form is divine, and love, like life, is deathless. Why do we come back to you? It would be easy to say farewell forever to earth with all its heartaches, its problems, its sufferings, its trials, its difficulties. But we love you, and there are others who are bound to you by ties of love just as strong. The marriage service performed in your churches refers to the existence of the marriage until death parts the man and his wife. If spiritually they are not united they are parted before death comes. If there is love, there is nothing that will ever separate them. Love is a mighty force in the universe. It is love that is expressed by all advanced beings in our world whose only desire is to serve you. We seek nothing for ourselves. We require no worship, no adoration, no gratitude. If we succeed in helping, all we ask is that you express your thanks to the Great Spirit and, because of what you have received, try to serve others.

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The greed of your world must be replaced by love, because love is an expression of the spirit. Love has many aspects, compassion, service, friendship, co-operation. You are all parts of one another, whatever you are, whoever you are and wherever you may be. Color, class, nationality, language, these constitute only physical differences. Spiritually you are all members of one another. You make up the vast human spiritual family because the common link of the spirit binds you all to one another with a tie that cannot be broken, just as it binds you all to the Great Spirit. The spirit that unites you is stronger than any of the physical differences that separate you from one another. You have to allow that spirit to express itself to its fullest capacity. You must learn self-regeneration. You must forget self, insofar as being materialistic in desire is concerned. This is not to say that you should overlook your physical needs. You must sustain the body, which is the temple of the spirit. Equally, however, you must tend and care for all the attributes of the spirit, which is the eternal you. You must allow the divinity within you to attain its fullest expression, so that you practice the brotherhood and sisterhood which is a natural fact of your being. The soul is not white, yellow, black or red. The soul has no color or racial bar. This is what you have to learn to practice. Superiority comes only when you unfold the divinity within you, and it expresses itself in love and compassion and consideration, not only for all the other humans in your world but for the animals who share this planet with you. You must abolish needless cruelty and exploitations everywhere. Peace will come when you put into practice the facts that appertain to your spiritual origin and destiny. In everything I say I am governed by the desire to be helpful, to bring some understanding, some knowledge, some truth and some wisdom into your lives. It is possible that the principles that we enunciate may be contrary to certain theological ideas of doctrines, dogmas and creeds on which you have been nurtured from childhood days. Our appeal is directed to your reason. If there is anything we say or do that insults your intelligence or makes your reason revolt, do not accept it. We desire to win your reason, your intelligence, so that you may co-operate with

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us and be instruments of the Great Spirit in ensuring that the divine will must prevail. You will help to speed the coming of peace in your world. As you learn to fulfill yourselves you will obtain as a result a richness, radiance, steadfastness, resolution, awareness and inner peace. You will be in harmony with the laws that the Great Spirit devised, and even with the Great Spirit, a portion of whose divinity is within each one of you. Silver Birch was asked if there were any final words he would like to say to those who would hear the cassette made of this sitting. I would like to give my love to all my friends, many of whom I have not met. I would like them to know that I appreciate the love and affection that come to me from them and make it possible for me to work in your worlds. It is not an easy task; it is a wonderful challenge which I have accepted. Your world is cold, it is dreary, it is dismal, it is dark. But here and there throughout your earth we find places where there are the human hearths of love, affection and friendship where we can warm ourselves and enjoy the radiance that is offered by these lighthouses of the spirit in your world. For others who are newcomers, I say: pray for guidance, pray for knowledge, pray for truth, and it will come to you. It has been said truly, Ask and you shall receive, knock and it shall be opened unto you. May the blessing of the Great Spirit be with you always.

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The Healing Mission A healer’s life, though spiritually rewarding, is never easy. Silver Birch always encourages those who use their gifts to help others: *** I love all those who try to serve, whether it be with healing or in any other form of mediumship. I love them all, for I know the difficulties they will encounter because that is an integral part of their mission. In the case of a healer, you have to suffer in order to have the essential compassion for sufferers to come to you. It is only when you have plumbed the depths yourself that you have the rightful feeling for others who turn to you when there is nowhere else to go. You are richly blessed. I cannot say to instruments of the spirit that their lives will be beds of roses. That is not the way spiritual mastery is obtained. The higher you seek to rise, the more difficult it must become. In that road you tread it becomes lonelier as gradually the familiar landmarks must be left behind. If the prizes of the spirit were easily gained, they would not be worth the having. Achievement, attainment, these mean sacrifices. But there is a law of compensation. Whatever you have lost materially will be restored and replenished with far more than has been lost. We will always ensure that your material necessities will be forthcoming. We cannot promise you so called luxuries of earth-life; many of them are far from luxurious in the effect that they have. What we can promise is that as you serve, so will you be served. It is not the curing of the physical body that is the most important. It is touching the soul of the sufferer to increase the divine spark, thus ensuring, as far as you can, that the result of the healing will bring awareness and understanding of eternal spiritual realities for the one who has had the illness, so that it becomes a catalyst. That is what matters. If you heal a body and do not touch the soul, then from our viewpoint the healing is a failure. If you touch the soul, you help to fan the divine spark. You help to achieve a closer unity between the individual and the great sublime supreme power that endowed that person with life. That is important. No others in your world can perform that task except those endowed with the gifts of the spirit. It cannot be easy, it must be difficult; but you will not be - 82 -

presented with any obstacle or hurdle for which the power will not be provided so that you will overcome it. Once you consent to serve, the way is shown. There is nothing to fear for what the morrow will bring forth. You cannot help all who come to you, but your availability is a means by which they can find their true self. If you succeed, then express your gratitude to the Great Spirit. If you fail, the failure is not yours. The patient has had an opportunity and has not taken it. You are the recipient of a divine power. Expressing it brings a great responsibility to do the best you can. The laying on of hands is merely playing with the toys. What is important is to bring awareness, realization, to touch the soul, I cannot put it clearer than that. Every individual in your world is a combination of physical body, mind and spirit. These are the three aspects of the one total self. They are not divisible, but essential parts of the one whole. If you touch the soul, then you help the other components of body and mind to achieve the wholeness that brings health. So let them play their respective parts and bring health, certainty, confidence, inner well-being, awareness, so that they are at peace with themselves and with everybody else they encounter. We are concerned with touching souls so that the spark of the divine spirit which is embedded within every human being can be fanned and become a beauteous flame. Thus the divinity within finds a fuller, richer, more majestic expression. Your world is full of millions of people who do not know what they are there for, who they are, what it is that they must achieve whilst they are incarnate on earth. You can help them to realize that they are spirits with bodies, that the real individual is the deathless spirit, that the spirit is there to gain the experience to equip it for its larger life in our world. That is the most important thing that you can do. You demonstrate that the Great Spirit, the apex of love and wisdom and compassion, provides everyone with the opportunity to find himself or herself and begin to live, as all people in your world should live, not in superstition, ignorance or darkness, but in the full light of knowledge, with serenity and confidence as their constant companions. You are not responsible for what others do or say. You are responsible only for what you do or say. Do not concern yourself with the opinions or actions of others.

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If you are hurt, it seems that there is still some room for development. Do not allow any thoughts of any kind from any source to hinder, mar or delay the service that you can render. You have been endowed with a gift. Use it wherever you can. You have heard about the angels weeping? They weep often when they see those who are not behaving in a fashion that is consistent with their knowledge and understanding. But we realize they are not perfect because they are human. You will all make mistakes. There is a divine purpose and plan for all of us. You feel lonely. Every soul treading the path of attainment must experience loneliness. But you have the companionship of evolved beings who will never desert you. Your strength comes not from your world but from ours. The source of all your inspirations is in our realm. We will not forget you. We will not leave you. We will not let you down. We will always encourage you to do the best you can. Help wherever opportunity arises, and know that you are fulfilling yourself, which is the purpose of your being on earth. It is only human to have doubts. Do not worry. Worry disturbs the conditions and makes it even more difficult. Have faith, founded on the priceless knowledge which is yours. That knowledge is incontrovertible. It provides the solid, enduring foundation on which to build the whole of your life. If doubt enters your mind, as it will do, then think back to the past, to the days of darkness and difficulty when there seemed no road to tread, where none was able to offer help, when it seemed that you had come to the end of everything that life could offer. Then in the darkness and gloom the little light of the spirit began to show its way to bring you where you are today. You have many more pages of your earthly book to be turned. Thank the Great Spirit for the opportunities of service provided for you. *** Silver Birch told an Australian healer and his wife: Not only have you travelled a long way physically, but similarly it has been a long journey spiritually to bring you where you now are. Like all those who are instruments of the spirit it has not been an easy road for you. - 84 -

In order to become ambassadors for the Great Spirit, the human channels have to be tried and tested so that their latent strength can rise to the surface. They are then ready to meet the challenges that their mission will inevitably make them encounter. It is not possible to achieve even the first steps in spiritual mastery unless you are ready to do so by a process which means that you must suffer. Suffering is the crucible. Those on whom the Great Spirit with infinite wisdom has bestowed the gift of healing must experience difficulty, sorrow, crisis and trial so that they can have compassion for the ones who will come to them in their suffering and ask for healing. But there is a law of compensation. As low as you sink materially, so correspondingly can you rise spiritually. The story of every potential healer and medium follows a similar pattern. They reach that stage when they feel that nothing materially offers any hope. It is then that the soul becomes ready to receive the influx of power and inspiration which will enable the owner to begin to fulfill himself or herself. Spiritual growth is not achieved when the sun is shining and the sky is cloudless. It is when the storm is blowing, the wind raging and all looks dark, gloomy and depressing, that the soul begins to come into its own and the way is shown for what lies ahead. The law of compensation is automatic in its operation. No matter how much your soul has cried out for help and guidance when none seemed possible, you get the richness of the reward in being able to serve others as you were served and the way was shown to you. That is what I tell all healers and mediums. You two are giving a unique service in your part of the world. You should rejoice at the opportunities to fulfill yourselves and also show that the Great Spirit provides every one of His children with a second chance. When doctors, despite their skills, learning and experience, say they can do no more, the power of the spirit can often produce results which bring health where it was absent. You will not be able to do this for everybody who comes to you. It is not possible to cure every sufferer who knocks on your door. Some are not ready; others have to endure their illness because it is a karmic condition which has its part to play in their lives. Silver Birch then asked the healer: - 85 -

What made you decide to practice healing? A need within to see if I could be an instrument for the spirit world to bring about improvement in people’s physical and spiritual condition. Did you find that it worked? Yes It says in your Bible, Add to your faith knowledge. I have to tell you, as I have said to others, that to your knowledge you must add faith. The difference is quite simple. It is not a play on words. When you have no knowledge it is good to have faith; not blind, credulous, unreasonable faith. Because you are human beings in an imperfect world, it is impossible for you to have all the knowledge that there is, because knowledge, like the Great Spirit, is infinite. As you become more receptive you are able to receive greater knowledge. As you develop, more spirit power can flow through you. So, because of the knowledge you have, treat that as the foundation on which to order your lives, and have faith that the way will be shown what it is you have to do. To this I will add something else. Before you came into your world this is what you chose to do. It took some time before awareness came. The whole plan was revealed to you before you incarnated. That plan, if you co-operate and are patient, will fulfill itself. Do not be in a hurry. The things of the spirit cannot be accelerated beyond their natural growth. You can have instant coffee, but you cannot have instant spiritual attainment. It is a slow, steady, but sure process that is achieved only one step at a time. I marvel at the perfection of the natural laws and the way in which they operate. I have asked you one question and will ask you another. Why did you want to come to this gathering tonight? Because we have read of your teachings. When newcomers are brought into our environment we suggest that to the many questions they have they will find the answers if they read the books that contain your teaching. Because we were coming over from Australia we thought it would be a privilege to meet you. Turning to the stenographer the guide calls his scribe, Silver Birch said: Do you hear that? Without her you would not have these books containing the teaching given to me so that I can transmit to you.

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It is always a great joy to welcome here any channel of the spirit. If there is anything I can do to help them in their ministry, it is a privilege. It is one of the reasons why I have returned to your world to help wherever I can. Here the healer’s wife said: At the present time I am trying to spread spirit teachings. I seem to have been going through a schooling process, but not specializing in any particular aspect. Is it possible for the spirit world to inform me into which channel I will be directed? Do not worry, the way will be shown. Just follow your intuition and the inspiration that comes. If there are any doubts at any time, withdraw into the silence, meditate, and you will find the answers come to you. You are doing very, very well. You are making your mark in a vast continent where these truths are sorely needed. People are coming to you. Do not go looking for them. Just be available. They will continue to come to you because they will have heard what the power of the spirit has done for others. If you help them, rejoice. If you cannot help them, shed a silent tear that they had their chance and could not take it. If a person is in poor health should he or she stop healing for the moment? No. Only unless they are in such a pitiable condition it makes it impossible for the power of the spirit to operate. There are many excellent healers who suffer from poor health because they are transmitters; as long as they have the ability to transmit they will have the power flow through them. *** Welcoming a healer and his wife, Silver Birch said to the husband: The last time we met you had many grounds for criticism about the problems, difficulties, hindrances and frustrations which seemed to be troubling you. I hope that position has been changed. There is an improvement. I am learning to live with it. The whole of earthly life consists of learning to live with it, facing up to the problems that come your way, overcoming them as best you can, and awaiting the next one. They are challenges you have to meet so that the real you, the spirit, can evolve, develop and unfold as a result, and emerge better and stronger because of what you have achieved.

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It would be folly to tell any disciple who seeks greater truth and understanding that the path will be an easy one. Spiritual mastery is slowly attained. The prizes of the spirit are not quickly earned. But once they are in your possession they are there for all time. They will never be lost, which is something that can never be said for your material possessions. You both are the recipients of more guidance than you can appreciate. If you were clairvoyant you would be aware of the great love that surrounds you and ensures that no real harm can ever befall you. So every morning await with eager anticipation the spiritual adventures that will unfold for you. And, as I often tell my friends, look back and see how the signposts of the spirit pointed the way for you, and guidance came even when it appeared you were in the blackness of despair. Is that right? The answer was, Yes. It has given me strength. To endure the suffering? Yes. There is no suffering so strong that you do not possess the inner strength and can call upon an outer power to enable you to overcome it. The burden is never heavier than can be borne. If you strive to live in harmony with the natural laws you will find an inner peace, tranquility and resolve which will ensure that you always come through. *** To a healer who survived the horrors of a concentration camp, the guide said: It is not possible while you are in your world to have the answers to all the questions that arise in your minds. It is impossible for you to have the fullness of knowledge because you are circumstanced in a world of three dimensions, and occasionally the problems that beset you can be appreciated only when you are able to manifest outside these limited dimensions. These problems involve considerations of a spiritual nature that you cannot solve, because perforce you can look at them only from the viewpoint of earthly life. You cannot measure them in relationship to the infinity of living which is compulsory for every human being. So this is where the element of faith arises. You begin by adding knowledge to faith. Then you arrive at the stage when you must add faith to knowledge. You are in the realm of what is speculation, because you cannot get the answers that would appeal to your reason.

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When I say faith, I do not mean credulous, irrational faith. I mean the faith that is founded on knowledge, a faith founded on that sure base of incontrovertible evidence that cannot be gainsaid, and leaves you in no doubt about the spiritual realities which are the basis of all being. I cannot promise even those I love that they will be exempt from problems. By the very nature of earthly life you must endure these problems. You must grapple with them. You must call on latent, divine power within yourself to help you. If that is insufficient, go one step higher and call on the greater wisdom that streams from the infinite storehouse. If you have had no problems, you would be akin to spineless automatons, puppets, marionettes. You have infinite possibilities that have to be developed to their fullest extent whilst you are on earth. The only way this can happen is not when the sun is shining, not if you are living in a bed of roses, not when all is quiet and peaceful and tranquil, but when the storm is raging. It is then that the challenge calls forth this latent power, and you develop. You unfold the spiritual nature within. In reality your troubles are your greatest friends. They are the means by which you find yourself. Therefore, paradoxically though it may seem, you must welcome troubles when they arise, and realize that in reality they wear the mask of friendship for you. I always say, Look back when crisis comes, and see how the signposts of the spirit have always pointed the way, even in the darkest hours when it seemed that no answer could be forthcoming. Look back in your own life, the tragedies that embroiled you, the situations that seemed impossible of relief or even escape, the difficulties that posed their greatest challenges. Even in the worst of your earthly experiences you were led unfailingly to where you are today, and that guidance will never desert you. There is a pattern in all human life, and it repeats itself. Especially is this the case in the lives of those who have service to render. There are no chances, no coincidences, no miracles. The supreme fact about the whole of life in its infinite variations is that the law runs throughout the vast universe, and nothing and nobody is outside the operation of natural law.

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Guiding Lights Questioned about spirit guides, whose voluntary mission is to aid their beloved earthly charge along the path to enlightenment, Silver Birch returned to the simile of the diamond. Can you tell me if spirit guides in general are an extension of one’s own personality on a higher scale, or whether they are separate entities? It is a rather complex subject. I would prefer to use the word individuality rather than personality. I draw distinctions between the personality, which is physical, and the individuality which is the soul or spiritual make-up, the reality behind the mask, so to speak. Persons are persons so far as your world is concerned, but you cannot separate spiritual individuality in the same way. There are, for example, affinities, two kindred halves of the one soul, and sometimes they incarnate at the same time. There are also what I call facets of the one diamond. This is the over-soul, the greater individuality, and the facets are aspects of it which incarnate into your world for experiences that will add luster to the diamond when they return to it. Also there are people who, although separate persons, are aspects of the one individuality. For instance, my medium, his wife and myself are parts of one individual. So you can have facets of the one guide. You can call these extensions if you like, but it comes to the same thing. Only an infinitesimal part of the whole individuality can be manifested in physical form on earth. I receive guidance, I am aware of it and the level from which it is coming. I have not been able to know whether this is coming from a general source or a particular guide. Is there any way by which prayer or meditation can lead one to this knowledge? Shall I repeat words that are very familiar? When the pupil is ready the master appears. Is that not the answer? Do not bother about it. All guidance streams from the Great Spirit. Ambassadors from the hierarchy and other enlightened beings, who are kindred souls as far as you are concerned, attach themselves to you sometimes before you are born into your world.

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Sometimes they make themselves known to you before you incarnate into your world; sometimes you agree with them that you will volunteer to perform certain tasks. It does not matter what names you call them. They are there. They do not leave you. Their task is as it says in your Bible, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee. These are the angels of light who surround their charges, whose selfimposed task is to guard, to guide, to sustain them and always to point the way to the spiritual path that ultimately leads to mastery. It is not an easy path; it is strewn with rocks and boulders. It becomes increasingly difficult as familiar landmarks have to be left behind. But as correspondingly low as you sink, so you can rise, and the heights to which you can aspire are infinite. Perfection is not a process that you will attain. It is one which you will always be in the process of attaining. If you wish to gain the prizes of the spirit you must prepare to make sacrifices, but once attained they can never be lost. We are aware of all your difficulties, your problems and your desires. We know that you live in a material world. We have access to the sources of supply to ensure that those who serve will never go hungry or thirsty. All that is necessary will be provided. What we say to you and to everyone we encounter is to do the best you can; no more is expected of you. When you fall down you can pick yourself up. The visitor, a healer, explained that she was worried as to what would happen when the time came for Silver Birch’s medium to pass on. Stop worrying - worry is a bad counselor. Have no fear. The plan will fulfill itself. I look back at the beginning of my mission with just one instrument. Then I was unable to speak your language with any degree of efficiency. I realize how fortunate we are to have reached so many people. Others will follow. They will have the means at their disposal of reaching far more people than we have done, because of technological devises that are to come. You cannot measure what you are achieving. These are the imponderables. You heal physical bodies but, more important, you touch souls. You allow the patient’s tiny seed of divinity to be stirred into activity and begin to flower. It is a start that ultimately will enable the individual to achieve fulfillment. Rejoice at the opportunities for service you enjoy. You were born to heal. Must occasionally it gets a little discouraging. - 91 -

I know. I have not worked in your world for all this time without being aware of human frailties. You have the divine potential, the divine armory on which you can call. If that is not sufficient, call on us. We will not fail you. When you feel tired, frustrated or pessimistic, withdraw from the noisy, strident clangor of your world into the silence of your soul. Gradually attune yourself to all the rich radiance that is around you. Drink in all the beauty. Experience the calm, tranquility, repose and steadfastness that this attunement has to offer. Then, refreshed, take up the cudgels and start again. You must continue; you cannot draw back. Give service whenever you can. Deny none who come to seek your aid. Do not look for them. They will come to you. There is no need to go out like a town crier and say, Who wants to be healed? They will beat a path to your door. Those on whom the Great Spirit with infinite wisdom has conferred the gifts of the spirit should go where they are led, to reach wherever they can, and drop seeds in the hope that they will fall in fertile ground and souls will become enriched as a result. You cannot measure or estimate the work that instruments of the spirit are doing.

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What is Death? Death is the sloughing off of the physical body as the spirit body gradually emerges. There is nothing to fear in death. Death is the great liberator; death brings freedom. You rejoice when babies come into your world. There are many who cry in our world when babies are about to be born into your world. Similarly there is weeping when people die in your world, but there is rejoicing in ours. Death means that the life has served its purpose, or should have done, and the individual is ready to enjoy all the tremendous richness and beauty that the spirit life has to offer. You have the spirit, which is the divine essence that enables you to live. You have a physical body that exists because it is animated by the spirit. When the spirit finally withdraws -- I stress finally because temporarily it does so when you sleep, but returns when you wake -- death comes to the physical body because the animation has gone. Those who have clairvoyance will see that the parting is finally accomplished when the cord connecting the spirit body to the physical one, after being extended as the spirit body gradually moves away, is cut. When that severance takes place, death occurs. There is nothing and nobody in your world who can by any means enable the physical body to live again. *** A problem has arisen because of new techniques of removing organs. Now doctors wait for people to die to take a heart or kidneys. The question is: Is the person dead? Am I at liberty to take the organ? I know about transplants, and am aware that the motive is often a very good one. But I must say that I am opposed to transplanting any part of the human body to other people. Some people believe it is necessary to leave the body in a state of peace for a given amount of time. This is because of the present-day tendency to whisk people into laboratories and open them up for experimental purposes. Do you think this is in any way harmful to the soul or the spirit?

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It depends on whether the individual has any knowledge of spiritual matters. If there is ignorance, there can be temporary harm to the soul. Even when the cord connecting the physical and spirit bodies is cut, there is still a certain amount of interplay due to the long association of the two forms of being. Generally it is considered advisable, where there is complete ignorance of spiritual truths, for an interval of three days to elapse before there is either burial or cremation. What happens after that is unimportant. If people wish to give their bodies to help knowledge for purposes which can be of service to others that is a matter for them to decide. But let me also say this. There is a time to be born and there is a time to die. If that time to die is reached than transplants will not succeed in maintaining you in your world. But there is a problem on a plane which crashes and they die instantly. What is the effect on them? Exactly the same as I have said. Those who have knowledge of spiritual realities will not be affected. Those who have not will be affected because of the shock. But in the process of time, awareness and realization will come. *** I have been watching on TV The Making of Mankind. It set me thinking about the origin of the human soul. In the very early beginning does the human soul emerge from a group of an animal species? No. Does that mean the animal kingdom is separated from us? No. How does the human soul first emerge? It does not emerge at all. It has no beginnings. I always thought that the human soul has gradually evolved. No, the body has evolved. The soul is part of the Great Spirit which always was and always will be. The soul has always been. It is individuated when it becomes incarnated into the human frame. The soul has no beginning and no end. It says in your

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Bible, Before Abraham was I am. The spirit has always existed; the spirit was not created out of nothing. Spirit is life. Life is universal. Souls, like spirits, do not have beginnings and ends. Spirit individuals when it incarnates into human form but as spirit or soul it has always existed. *** Spirit, the dynamic, the essence, the vitality that is life, has always existed. Spirit is the energy out of which every manifestation of life is formed, whether it be a plant, a bird, a tree, an animal, a human. Spirit is the mainspring of existence. When a child is conceived it is not a new soul or a new spirit. It is part of the eternal spirit that has always been in existence. It becomes individualized and that individuality functions for a short time. When birth is to be achieved and a physical body prepared for its existence, spirit becomes individualized and incarnates into your world. There is nothing new in that spirit. It is taking individual form. It is becoming a person. When he or she is developed and leaves your world, it is a facet of a larger diamond to which it adds its contributions. If there is a time for everybody to be born, equally there is a time for them to die. What happens when there is a Caesarian operation; somebody steps in and alters the time of birth? It alters only the time of entry into your world. It does not alter the time when the spirit has started at the moment of conception to begin to express itself. There is also the free will where an individual can decide to end his physical life, but then automatically he or she is confronted with the law of retributions. When a child is to be born it often happens that the doctors accelerate the birth with artificial means. A baby is born earlier than it is due. Does this have any influence astrologically? The things that worry you! The only vital fact about entry into your world is when life first begins to show itself. That is when conception takes place, not when a baby is born. I am not interested in the astrological arguments. With conception, earth life begins. Without conception there is no earthly life. The Pope in Brazil complained about the poorness of the people and stressed at the same time that family planning should never be allowed. How does this make sense? - 95 -

The Pope is a very good man, but he is not the repository of all the knowledge that exists in the universe. Family planning will continue in your world because it is your responsibility. But if a child is to be born, it will be born despite all family planning. *** I know some people who genuinely do not wish to survive death. What would you say to them? I know some people who genuinely do not wish to be born into your world. They can do nothing about it. You cannot opt out of the natural law. It will operate irrespective of what you think about it. You see in the unfolding processes of nature how this panorama presents itself unceasingly, irrespective of man’s desires, wishes, or even objections. Could it ever be true it is sometimes planned that a person will commit suicide? No! The planning is done by the soul before it incarnates. Are there no lessons one can learn by committing suicide? No! The Great Spirit gives life. It is not your responsibility to shorten it. When a person passes, does he know he has died? Not all. The majority do, but it takes some time for a complete answer to be realized. Do spirit people not help? Yes, we always help, even if the one who is being transferred from your world may be unaware of the aid he is receiving. All is known by the powers that be. There is a hierarchy of evolved beings, some of whom have never incarnated in your world. They are charged with fulfilling the divine plan. It is an overall one, and encompasses everything and everybody. There is nothing that can be outside the scope of universal natural law. When people die, relatives and loved ones meet them and help them over. Does it mean they are all at the same level? No, because those who love you will in most cases have evolved spiritually since their passing. They will come down, as it were, so as to be able to

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communicate at the stage you are when you reach our world. You must try to realize that spiritual growth is always towards maturity. There is no equality with physical age. Now I come back to the question about at what stage in our world is awareness attained. This is difficult because awareness is a growing condition, not fixed or finite. Awareness has infinite possibilities. You cannot reach the end of it. As you increase it, you realize there is more to be attained. It is an eternal process at work. Awareness is a gradual realization. It is not a sudden transformation from ignorance to knowledge. It is graduated, and slowly comes as the soul is ready to reach higher stages. We obviously don’t live as long as we could physically under better conditions. Under perfect conditions probably we could live to be a hundred and fifty? Do not confuse physical age with spiritual maturity. It is not the number of years that matters, but the growth, development and unfoldment of the soul that is temporarily manifested through the body. It is not the plan of the Great Spirit to increase the number of physical years that your body should exist in your world. What should happen is that when the spirit is ready the body will die, just as the apple drops from the tree when it is ripe. So forget the physical years. They do not matter. The whole object and essence of earthly life is to enable the spirit to have the kind of exercise, education and experience that fit it to begin its life in our world. If the spirit does not have the experience to equip it for our world, then it is like a child who has gone to school has not learnt the lessons, and is not ready for the adult life that follows. *** To a widow whose husband had labored long in the spiritual field the guide gave this encouragement: I am very glad to welcome you and to reassure you of fundamental truths which have provided a help in your hour of difficulty and trial.

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It is not easy for people in your world, even when they have knowledge that life is continuous after physical death, to adjust themselves when those who are closest to them are removed to another dimension of the universe. It would be foolish to minimize the fact that inevitably there is sorrow when this physical separation takes place. But it is only a physical separation and not a spiritual one. Death is inevitable for everyone in your world. There comes a time when you have to say farewell to earth, for it has no more to offer you and the soul is ready for the adventures that are an essential part of its evolution towards perfection. How you comport yourself when the trial comes is a question you have to decide. I know it is not easy. Death cannot separate those whom love has joined. Love, like life, is undying. And love, like life, is a mighty force that can work its will as conditions make it possible. Of course there are times in the silence when tears are shed. But hold your head high, and know that the power of the spirit will never desert you. Help will always be forthcoming. Do not worry about anything. Worry blocks the channels by which help can come. You may not always realize it, but you are very fortunate because when you plumbed the depths of sorrow you were ready to receive knowledge. It was not easy to come out of the depths, but the way was shown. Now you are completely certain that the one you love is as close to you as it is possible for any human being to be. I always wish that people in your world, especially those who have this knowledge, could become aware of what is around and about them. If only they could see the ones they love who are close to them, shielding them, guarding them, guiding them, ensuring that no real harm will ever befall them. If you could realize the extent of this radiance you would never have any doubts or fears as to what the morrow will bring. So you should, as I always tell you friends, greet each new day as the herald of wonderful spiritual adventures Your life has been transformed by the evidence you have received. I know, because I have seen it, that you labor to help others as you were helped. Do not bother about what others say. That does not matter. What matters is the way you conduct your life; do the best you can and serve wherever you can. - 98 -

Your man is freed from the thralldom of the flesh. He will never again suffer the aches and disabilities that proved such a nuisance to him in the last days of his earthly existence. He will make you aware of his continued presence in what he still regards as home. So keep a stout heart, hold your head high and continue to be an exemplar of how to behave when death removes the one who is closest to you. The separation is physical, not spiritual. There is nothing in your world or mine that can part those whom love has united. Love, like life, is stronger than death. Love, like life, is the spirit, and the spirit cannot be destroyed.

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Violence - The Way of Self-pity Mankind’s history is dark with greed, aggression and oppression. Bitterness still festers and erupts in many parts of the globe, siring fear in millions who wish to live in peace. Silver Birch offers these words to the despairing. *** Your world is in a ferment. It is partly due to the upheavals caused by two world wars. In a ferment sometimes not always the best comes to the top. What you are really seeing take place is the dim outline of a new world. Birth is not always a beautiful or painless process. Violence is a form of mass-emotion, a kind of hysteria born of inferiority, a self-pity that desires to draw attention to itself as the only means of making others aware of their existence. It is not an easy life that you live in your world today; it is a very difficult one. You have violence on an ever-increasing scale. You have greed, selfishness, rapacity and all the other cancerous happenings that are a sore on the world body. Millions have lost their way; millions worship false gods; millions have no idea of what life is all about, and what they have to do to fulfill themselves. It is not only true in your country, but of many lands which are far worse than the one in which you dwell. Greed and avarice, by-products of materialism, have taken command of people who worship this false god. They all desire the golden calf which they regard as the acme of all attainment. They have no understanding of eternal verities. Their allegiance is to materialism, the festering cancer of your world, but it does not affect the whole of its inhabitants. Do not let it trouble you unduly. There is nothing you can do about it, except to show an example in your own lives of how those who are the ambassadors of the spirit should comport themselves. You will not be harmed, but protected as in the days that have gone. I have said it before, Lift of your hearts. Let others be fearful, and despair of what the morrow will bring. You have nothing to fear. No problem, no obstacle, no handicap will come your way that - 100 -

you will not be able to overcome. Call on the divine power within and the even greater divine power without, to which you have access. It is difficult in the turmoil and turbulence, the strife, anxiety and trouble of your world to remember that these affect only the physical. Your soul cannot be damaged. Your body may be, but the soul will always be ready to perform its task. Will man ever live a life of peace with his fellows instead of warring? That is very difficult to answer. What you must appreciate is that the Great Spirit endowed man with an element of free will. Human beings could have been created as puppets. That free will provides man with the opportunity of helping what I call the infinite processes of creation. Man has the chance to make the world in which he lives a garden of Eden, a paradise, a heaven, just as he can make it a dark, desolate and grim forbidding world. That is the measure of his choice. You have war, violence, greed, cupidity, selfishness, because materialism predominates. Materialism exists because the vast majority of people in your world do not realize there is a life beyond physical death, despite the teaching of the many religions. Millions do not accept the fact of an inevitable afterlife which is really tangible, where there is compensation and retribution. They believe that earth is the only life they will ever have. So logically they argue that if the physical is all, let us have the best it has to offer. This is the cause of war. This leads people to hate, to subjugate, to imprison and even to kill one another. That is not the whole of the picture. I have paid tribute to the infallibility of the natural law which also places a restriction on the havoc that man can wreak in your world. We are engaged in the mighty task of helping to bring an understanding of spiritual realities wherever we can. Mediums demonstrate that man is a spiritual being with a spiritual destiny. Man makes or mars his destiny according to the way he conducts himself. The law is unfailing in its sequence of cause and effect, of sowing and reaping. Whatever good you do, you are the better for it. Whatever selfishness you practice, you are the worse for it. You cannot cheat the natural law. You - 101 -

cannot say on your deathbed that you are sorry for what you have done, and automatically obliterate all the effects of the causes you set in motion. As this truth gradually is accepted by an increasing number of people, so wars will lessen and peace obtain a greater hold in larger areas of your world. That is the only answer I can give. It cannot be done overnight. Play your part. Do the best you can. Help those who come to you. Be kind, tolerant, compassionate. Serve where the opportunities come. And that is how you will help. *** Does the anguish that we sometimes find around come not from without but from within? It can be both. What you must appreciate is that earthly life provides a polarity which is not available in our world. In our world people of the same stage of evolution are in the same spiritual sphere or plane. In your world you are mixing all the time with people of varying stages of evolution. You get opportunities for all the opposites to be encountered. Thus you can have light and dark, heat and cold. All this is the purpose of earthly life. It provides the means by which the soul comes into its own. It is the school where you learn the lessons which fit you for that larger world which one day you will inhabit. If you have anguish, it is because by so doing you will be able to appreciate joy, its opposite. There is a saying, which I have often quoted, that things can be equal and opposite, the two sides of the same coin. It is in the variety of experience that the soul finds itself. This is the equivalent to the process of the hardening of the steel, the emergence of the gold after being crushed from its ore. I perceive in many people what I believe to be a mental revolution. I believe this is a natural sequence which our spirit friends are organizing, and the timing is now. Your world is in a melting-pot. You are seeing the war between good and evil, similar to the story told in the Bible. You are also seeing the unfortunate results of the worship of mammon, the pursuit of greed and avarice, the desire for material power, the subjection of all that is noble, elevating, spiritual; the selfishness that I call the festering cancer of your world. At the same time religion, in its conventional sense, has lost its potency, influence and validity to guide and direct. Allegiances to false doctrines that - 102 -

make no sense to those who have intelligence means that an increasing number continue to turn their backs on what the conventional religions have to offer. In addition science has started on the wrong road, with massive appliances that pose the crucial question mark of whether they will be used to benefit humanity or wreak destruction in your world. That is the crucial time in which you live, and it is the reason why we make a supreme effort. This is to influence, to guide, to direct and to point the only way by which peace, harmony, amity, concord and co-operation can be achieved. We are trying to demonstrate that all who live on earth are part of a vast spiritual family, that what you call God, and I the Great Spirit, is the supreme father of them all. We will win this fight. You and others are part of the vast army of the spirit engaged in this battle. So you will be to be tried and tested to ensure that you will not fail in the great task to which you have been assigned. Spirit is stronger than matter. There is no power in the world of matter that is greater than the divine power, which will triumph, though it will take time. There is no room for pessimism or despair among those who have knowledge. The Great Spirit constructed man with the head at the top so that he could look up. Were he intended to look down, his head would be where his feet are. Every soul engaged in the task of liberating humanity must go through the tests and challenges. They are essential parts of the spiritual development. There is no other way. When you come to our world and look back, you will thank the Great Spirit for all the difficulties, and realize they were most important parts of your earthly life. Your world has had prophecies of disasters for a long time. Often dates have been given when your world would be destroyed. There is no second coming. The Nazarene accomplished his earthly mission - two thousand years ago. He continues his mission in the larger life which I inhabit. His is the guiding influence that directs our activities. Your world will not be destroyed overnight. The Great Spirit, with infinite love and wisdom, has devised natural laws which provide for every facet of being, mighty or minute, complex or simple. The natural laws operate by evolution, not revolution. They ensure that the power of man is restricted. There are things he cannot do. He has a measure of free will, but it is limited. - 103 -

Do you think that the world, when it comes to the New Age, will have a much increased consciousness compared with what it has had so far? To me there is a constant process of evolution, development, unfoldment. It will not happen that overnight there will be a change and a new age will be ushered in. Gradually, as truth progresses, more and more people will become aware of it. Once they realize that the whole of the universe is founded on spiritual realities that cannot fail, and as a result they begin to live these implications, so there will be higher states of consciousness and awareness functioning in your world, but it will all be a gradual process. Will the Age of Aquarius herald any real changes in our world? Your world is always changing, not only physically but spiritually. You must accept the fact that, as there is a law of evolution, there must be changes as it occurs. Evolution means the gradual development from one condition to another that is higher than its predecessor. Can you tell us something about the future of our world? Your world will continue to exist because there is no individual or combinations of individuals who have the power to destroy the whole of it. There is a limitation placed upon the harm that can be done and the means that you can use, or can be invented or discovered, to wreak damage on such a vast scale that the world would cease to be tenable. Have no fear, the will of the Great Spirit must always prevail. Be positive, optimistic and constructive in your outlook, and play your part. Banish fear, worry, apprehension, anything that stops the rich power of the spirit from filling you and encouraging you to do the best you can. That is all we ask of you. Do the best you can. No-one can do better than his best. Have no fear of what the morrow will bring. The morrow is the herald of glorious opportunities for you to unfold latent divinity, to enjoy life in all its fullness, physically, mentally and spiritually, becoming increasingly aware of that wondrous spiritual radiance that is always round and about you. *** Do you believe capital punishment will solve our problems like violence? You will not solve your problems that way at all. Love is the fulfilling of the law. Whatever you do must be an attempt to help, not to exact revenge.

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Another murder does not excuse the first one. Killing by the State does not solve any situation. If you meet force by force you are not encouraging the powers of goodness, compassion and kindness to be exercised. All punishment must be remedial and redemptive. The object should always be to try and enable the soul to come into his own. To send into our world souls that are unready merely increases problems. It does not lessen them in your world or in ours. Besides, you can make mistakes. Two points occur to me. Suppose persons were precipitated into the next world swiftly, with all their sins heavy upon them, you might say. It is often argued that in this state they merely come back and influence other people with like tendencies. Therefore they do more damage after they had been transported to the next world than if they had been allowed to remain. Why can your side of life not deal with these who are in essence sick souls, take care of them just as we might, and so prevent them influencing others in the same direction? >/ It is not easy. Every second there are coming into our world souls not ready for it. We don’t want an increase. All our efforts are directed to helping people to live on earth as they should, so that they are ready for life in our world. The whole object of our coming back to your world is to teach love, which the Nazarene taught. You must love and not hate one another, or exact revenge. A Nigerian chief asked Silver Birch for his assessment of justice. I ask because in human conditions we attempt to administer justice. We look at the two sides and say one will be guilty. Is there any divine limit to the human understanding of justice? You cannot limit justice. Being divine it will operate, just like nature, irrespective of what you wish, think or desire. You cannot make comparisons between divine and human justice. Human justice is fallible, makes mistakes; the innocent is sometimes guilty and the guilty is sometimes innocent. Being human you must err, because you cannot be infallible. Divine justice is infallible. It cannot make mistakes, because of the law of cause and effect which is unfailing in its operation. You cannot interpose anything between cause and effect; the sequence is unbreakable, inevitable, unalterable. Were it not so, justice would not be divine and the Great Spirit cease to be perfect.

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Being human, you will make mistakes. Your judges will give wrong decisions. Your man-made laws cannot apprehend and apply to every condition in your human society. New factors arise for which your laws have not made provision, because they did not foresee them. The natural laws have foreseen every circumstance, because the Great Spirit is perfect. Nothing is forgotten, nothing is overlooked. All must operate within the framework of natural law. One day perhaps, when wisdom rules your countries, you will choose judges not only for their knowledge of law, but also because their clairvoyance has been sufficiently developed to enable them to see who is innocent and who is guilty. Could we say divine justice, which is the natural law, is infallible, but human justice is not infallible? Does that paraphrase what we have been talking about? It is not fallible because we are ordinary, sinful human beings without the full knowledge of the natural law? I call that a good paraphrase, but I do not like to call you sinful. The New Testament says, Sin is lawlessness; not in operation We love you because you are human. If you were perfect there would be no point in our coming to you. Probably you would be coming to us to help us on our way. A detective making his first visit to the circle remarked: In my profession I have seen many people destroyed and taken away before their time because of some ferocious act. I have often wondered if it were possible for somebody to talk to them to ensure that this could not happen again. Unfortunately too many of them become earthbound, and it takes a long time for enlightenment to come to free them from this self-created prison. It is a difficult problem on which I could enlarge. The true object of their treatment should not be revenge, which is a wrong emotion, but remedial, an attempt at rehabilitation. Justice is not revenge. I thought justice was prevention. But too often revenge takes priority. In the Old Testament it was An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But in the New Testament the Nazarene taught not only loving one’s neighbor, but even loving those who hate you. The acid test is the motive all the time. If the motive is right, all things will work out. *** - 106 -

A journalist sought the guide’s advice on her work. I have been asked to research and write about warnings that have come to mankind from the spirit world and from other worlds. One stated that nuclear power was evil and should stop, and also spoke about the selfishness of mankind. I would like your voice to be heard. If you have any particular warning, could you formulate it, please? I do not regard your nuclear power as evil. The use made of it can be evil. On the other hand, the use that can be made of it could be of tremendous benefit to your world. The decision lies with those who are capable of directing or misdirecting this tremendous power. As to warnings, do not assume for one moment that we have the equivalent spirit Cassandras who are saying, Woe, woe, woe, because there are dreadful cataclysms coming to you. The position is not simple. The Great Spirit has given His children a measure of free will within limits, so that they can either fill your world with radiance, beauty, glory and abundance or make it a hell on earth. It is man who has this choice. The more that technology produces, and reveals tremendous powers which it can unleash, so the responsibility becomes heavier as to how these are to be used in your world. There is no other way, so far as I can understand, that the processes of evolution could be accomplished, except that man, a child of a divine parent, with all the divine potential, should be allowed to express that, and flood your world with all the beauty that it could have, and help nature to release its massive bounty for all to share. That is the choice for man to have. But if he ignores it and worships the god of mammon, is greedy, selfish, avaricious, and cares not for his neighbor and nobody else but himself, then automatically he will fill his country and the world with all the darkness, difficulty, evils, pestilence and disease which are the fruits of a misused free will. But having said that, we stress that no matter how much power man has at his disposal, it has no comparison with the infinite power which has set limits on all the destruction and havoc that man can wreak in your world. He cannot destroy the entire world or the universe in which he lives. So it is still God’s world.

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Yes, it is still the Great Spirit’s world and the Great Spirit must prevail. God is infinite, God is divine love and wisdom, and God provides all His children with the means of sharing in a heavenly kingdom on earth if they so desire. If you were puppets, marionettes, robots, your life would be meaningless and purposeless. There would be no evolution, no gradual growth towards perfection. It would become a kind of eternal limbo of nothingness. That is not the object. I who have lived much longer than any of you have learned to regard with awe, wonder, respect and admiration the universal framework that divine perfection has created. Nothing can destroy the operation of laws that infinite intelligence devised. There is no need for those with knowledge, who are privileged to have a glimpse of the eternal principles upon which all life is governed, to have fear for the future. Despite your technological wonders, your scientific achievements, which can be used for good or ill, there is a limit to the havoc that man can wreak in your world. He has not unfettered, unlimited freedom to destroy the whole of your world and the physical bodies of those who dwell in it. Love is greater than hate. Spirit is superior to matter. The mightiest power in the universe emanates from the Great Spirit of all life. The natural laws, created by infinite intelligence and governed by divine wisdom, will ensure that slowly and inevitably there will come a better world than the one in which you live.

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The Enigma of Religion Though teachers have brought spiritual enlightenment throughout the ages, man in his ignorance has misunderstood much. All religions have a grain of truth; but when man makes bread to feed the multitude, often he throws away the wheat germ with the chaff. Silver Birch’s first comments will surprise many. *** People I have met state they are confirmed Spiritualists, yet they follow their orthodox religions. Should not they put behind these ideas when they accept Spiritualism? I am not bothered with these labels. I am not sure whether I am a Spiritualist, because I have not been confirmed. What you call yourself does not matter. We are concerned with the way you live your life. Religion, what is it? Is it going to church, synagogue, chapel or temple? Is it the acceptance of certain theological ideas devised by man? Is it calling yourself a Roman Catholic, a Protestant, a Buddhist, a Jew? Religion is living in a way that brings you closer to the Great Spirit. Religion is when the Great Spirit is expressed in your actions. Religion is service. If you find there are some people who have all the benefits of communication with our world, but still adhere to certain conventional theological beliefs, then be sorry for them. Say a silent prayer for them because they are still only on the first rungs on the ladder or are in the halfway stage. Recognize that it is not always easy to abandon the teaching received in childhood, when the mind was plastic and impressionable and accepted without question what was given to it. Gradually these theological ideas become part of the warp and weft of the subconscious mind, are embedded in its depths, and an individual finds it almost impossible to rid himself of them. Be patient. There was a time when all of us had ideas which we believed, but later wisdom made us abandon them. After all, none of us has attained the summit of perfection; to do so will require eternity. Be tolerant. Help them. Do

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not argue with them; that gets nowhere. In such discussion, as the poet said, They leave by the same door by which they came in. Be patient with those who cannot see further than their theological noses. Time will work its will with them, as it has with you. *** Many people are very depressed for no reason. What has come over the young people? Are they spiritually starved? They have not found their way. They have come into a world where violence rules. They believe their elders have betrayed them. They feel also that they can obtain no guidance from conventional religion. Do you think too much blame has been put on the elders? Everyone has his own path to find. I am not agreeing with their outlook. I am only explaining it, because in time they will become elders. There is no substitute for experience. Your bad experiences are the best for you. Your good experiences are often the worst for you. My friends have heard me say many times that the virtue of falling down is that you can pick yourself up. *** A visitor asked about the world’s creation, citing the description in Genesis. In some quarters it was believed that creatures from outer space came to earth for this purpose, he said. Of course you are now addressing your question to an out-of-space creature! Do not be bothered by what it says in Genesis or in any other book. If it is unacceptable to your reason, dismiss it. How did your world begin is what you want to know. There are many theories; we really don’t know. Let me say that I have a little more than a theory. I have a little knowledge on this subject. Your world has always existed. It had no beginning, nor will it have an end. If you want to quote from the Bible, you have statements like the one attributed to the Nazarene, Before Abraham was I am.

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Spirit has always existed: it was not spontaneously created. It slumbered for millions of years until the rudimental beginnings of life gradually manifested in your world. Life is spirit and spirit is life. It always has had the potentials of infinity. There were no creatures from outer space to create the beginnings of life in your world. Life was always there, and developed, unfolded and progressed according to the natural laws of evolution that infinite intelligence devised. I understand that now a good deal of Darwin’s theory is being disputed, though at the time he was accepted. There seem to be facts which he missed. There are always facts that are missed because all knowledge is not available at any stage of evolution. Only perfection contains all knowledge, and perfection has not yet been attained in your world or in mine. Let me say categorically that evolution, physical, mental and spiritual, is part of the operation of natural law. I am not very keen on the thought of being descended from monkeys. It may also be true that monkeys are not very keen on the idea! In the fight of the Great Spirit monkeys are as precious as humans. *** Silver Birch has always expressed great love for Jesus, whom he calls The Nazarene. It has been my privilege many times with colleagues in my world to be present at conferences, congresses, meetings call them whatever you like. At these the Nazarene refers to many of the plans the hierarchy devised to ensure that the power of the spirit should remain in your world. The Nazarene is one of the hierarchy behind all the directives we receive when we leave your world occasionally to fortify ourselves to cope with our missions and to glean more of what it is we have to achieve. I have a great reverence for Jesus, the Nazarene, a wondrous example of what the power of the spirit could achieve when divinity assumes human form and gives to those available simple, but profound teaching, that love is a power that solves all problems when people allow themselves to be animated by it. The Nazarene demonstrated the same spiritual phenomena that we make available today, because their operation is due to the same natural laws which always have been, which still are in existence, and will continue to be so. - 111 -

Having attracted the multitudes by what were wrongly called miracles, he taught the great truths of the spirit: love thy neighbor as thyself, do good to those who hurt you; the essence of all religions. But the difference is this, that with his passing into our world the mission of Jesus did not end. He is still at work, inspiring those who continue to see and meet him, to propound these truths, to demonstrate these phenomena so that those who are ready would play their part in helping the infinite, creative power of the Great Spirit to flow through an increasing number of channels everywhere. We have nothing but respect and reverence for Jesus. But we do not have that respect and reverence for many of his followers who have worshipped and continue to worship Jesus, yet pay no heed to his teachings. Instead of the truth he taught unifying them, it divides them. In your world today there are black areas where the same followers of the Nazarene persecute and kill one another. They do not understand his mission. If you believe in the Nazarene and realize that love is the greatest power in the universe, you should not kill or commit acts of violence against others who say they believe in those same principles. It must be very agonizing to the Nazarene to see, as indeed do so many of you in the spirit world, what has been done in his name on earth. Yes, and he has shed many tears. After all, he is not responsible for what others do. You who call yourselves Spiritualists proclaim one of our greatest principles, that every individual is personally responsible for his or her acts. What did Jesus look like? The Nazarene has been described many times by people in our world. He is not as painted by artists living in varying countries and according to their cultures. He is very much like the kind of people among whom he moved during his ministry. Were he different, then he would not have fulfilled his mission. Some mediums speak of a Cosmic Christ. Others see Christ as an individual spirit. Are they two different aspects for the same existence? You are allowing names to bother you. There is the man Jesus, whose surname was not Christ, and there is what is called the Christ power, the power of the spirit. If you differentiate between the man and the power that animated him, you have the clearest picture of all.

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Would it be possible by automatic writing or some other means to tell us exactly what Jesus said? I don’t know. The difficulty is that no-one recorded the utterances of the Nazarene at the time and so memory would have to play its part. His main teaching was the gospel of love. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Do good to those who hurt you. Love is the fulfilling of the law. What else is required to help mankind? Love is the highest expression of the spirit. Love is what the Great Spirit has to offer. Love is what we offer you. The object of the Nazarene’s mission was to demonstrate spiritual reality. If the Nazarene were to reappear in your world today and to repeat what he said 2, 000 years ago I doubt if anyone would listen. You said so many people arrive in the spirit world with false teaching. In St. John’s gospel it says believing is the important part. No. Everyone will live after what you call death, not because of believing in a creed, a doctrine or dogma, but because it is an unalterable natural law. It has nothing to do with religion. It is a law as equal to the law of cause and effect. What you have quoted is one of the interpolations in the Bible which has caused great affliction and separated people. It is not paradoxical that a book, a religious book, a holy book, a sacred book, has caused more bloodshed than an ordinary volume could have done? Yet the purpose of religion should be to unite everybody in a common brotherhood and sisterhood because of their unbreakable fundamental spiritual relationship. Was the body of Jesus crucified? It does not matter. What matters is what Jesus taught. You will go on arguing forever about what happened at the crucifixion. I cannot prove what I say about that, and so I will not attempt to answer your question. I do not like to condemn others. That is not my mission. My mission is to draw attention to the spiritual principles on which life is founded. It seems to be that you worry a great deal about things which do not matter. Whether the Nazarene was crucified or not will make no difference to the evolution of your soul. Concentrate on the vital matters in your life. Here you are in a world with opportunities to play your part, to help others, to develop your spiritual nature

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and to fulfill yourselves. Don’t worry overmuch about whether there are people on Mars, whether you will resurrect in a thousand years. What matters is how you comport yourselves in your daily lives. Do the best you can. By doing so, you will enjoy a greater harmony with the Great Spirit. And as a result you will feel that radiance, tranquility, repose and confidence that come to all those who seek to make the will of the Great Spirit their will.

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Our Lesser Brethren? Silver Birch has always stressed man’s responsibility to every creature. Alas, because of lack of spiritual development, there are millions of people on earth who do not realize that the spirit which animates them is the same one that animates all the creatures who share the planet with them. They do not see them as spirits with earthly bodies, just as they are. They do not realize that because they believe they are superior to the animals, they have a responsibility towards them, because the higher should always help what it believes is the lower. You have needless cruelty and terror inflicted on innocent creatures in the false belief that through this vicious means health will be attained by humans. This is not true. The long-term problem is to spread the knowledge of spiritual realities so that these wicked and often diabolical experiments should altogether cease. You have to reach the stage where man has developed his conscience to know that what he is doing is wrong. Why should animals suffer at the hands of humans? Were they put here only to test our spiritual growth? Why were they not put on another physical plane whose inhabitants were highly-evolved beings who would love and help their spiritual evolution? The same question could be asked as to why humans are put into your world to suffer at the hands of other humans. Why cannot they be put elsewhere where they cannot suffer? What you have to realize is that the whole of earthly life is a preparatory school, a training ground where man is given the opportunity to manifest in the largest possible manner the divinity within him. He has, to a limited degree, the free will to decide his actions. As a result he advances or holds back the progress that he has to achieve in your world or in mine, so that the spirit evolves and gradually sheds the imperfections on its eternal path of progress. When you have free will then it is patent that some will exercise it wrongfully, vengefully, ignorantly, and others will suffer as a result.

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If the Great Spirit intended that all animals and all humans should be perfect, then they would not be in your world, or even in mine. They would have achieved the summit of evolution, which is not possible because it is an eternal progression. There is much to be done to end animal cruelty. There are wars constantly being fought between the forces of good and those of greed and selfishness, between the ones with knowledge and those who are ignorant. And there are the short-sighted people who do not realize the part animals play in your world and that they have as much right to be there as humans have. The battles will be fought, and gradually you will win. Will you say something about the next evolutionary stage for birds and fish which are evolving in line with human beings? Is this the deva evolution? What is the next stage for insects, so many of which seem so far advanced and have a complicated civilization of their own? I do not think the word civilization is correct. Applied to any life, civilization is the means by which you adapt your societies and cultures. If you ask will a bird ever become a human being, the answer is no. The deva evolution is part of the elemental life that concerns fairies and similar aspects of being. They have their part to play in nature’s growth. Evolution is part of the natural law for all life and is evidence that the Great Spirit is imbued with love. Evolution consists in growing from the lower to the higher all the time. The law of evolution embraces every facet of life, the insect, the birds, the fish, the human. They all have their parts to play and are related to one another. No aspect of life is isolated; every form of life is integrated so that the totality forms a composite whole. You are part of the same law of evolution that is responsible for how animals progress. If you work with the natural laws, if you are in harmony with them, you not only fulfill yourself, but at the same time you help the evolution of all other aspects of nature. The whole scheme is divinely ordered so that you play your parts as co-operative elements in it. Those who violate nature instead of working with it are performing a disservice to what they violate, and to themselves. Those who co-operate with nature are helping its growth and also helping the unfoldment of their spiritual natures. Does this mean that as human beings we have no special place but are part of the process?

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You are part of the eternal processes of life. Because you consider that man is a higher species than other forms of life, you have a responsibility to help what you regard as the lower, just as you desire that higher beings in our world should help you. Is there such a thing as a higher form of life in our world, so far as the animals are concerned? No, each animal has its own evolution to outwork. Whatever lives does so because it is spirit. Spirit is life, life is spirit. Therefore every living thing, creature, bird, fish, flower, tree, fruit, is spirit. When you talk of higher and lower it is only a question of the stage of evolution that is reached as compared with other stages in the variegated forms of life. To the fish you may be a higher stage of evolution, but to the hierarchy of our world you are at a lower stage. We are making such slow progress to help animals. It seems to get worse and worse in this world. This is the result of man being given a limited free will. If there were to be no problems, no struggles, no sacrifices, no difficulties, you could not evolve. Progress is achieved when you are confronted with difficulties, not when your life is easy. It is an inherent part of evolution that there has to be a crucible from which each soul must emerge as part of a testing time to ensure that it can call on latent strength. Progress is slow in some aspects and faster in others. It is man’s responsibility to ensure that he is at peace with all who share the earth with him. But whatever happens, there is compensation as part of the natural law. You have the responsibility of ensuring that animals should evolve according to their path of evolution. If you abnegate your responsibility, then you must pay the price for it. Those who practice cruelty will have to pay the spiritual price for everything they do. Alas, the innocent always suffer. We cannot thwart the operation of natural law. If a brutal man commits a murder he will have to pay the price, and there will be compensation for the victim. The law of compensation will always outwork itself. The Great Spirit has ensured that divine justice will be meted out to everybody through the laws of compensation and retribution. In nature it seems that the strongest survives. If that is right, how would this be applied to human and spiritual matters?

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Have you heard of symbiosis? Isn’t that a law of nature? And isn’t it a fundamental law that the co-operation existing in nature enables nature to fulfill its purpose? The tree absorbs the poisons in the atmosphere, purifies it, and enables you to be healthier. Is that strength, or is it not harmony and co-operation at work? I think of animals especially. Which animals have survived from prehistoric times? The elephant. Was that a brute? It was not. The animal was a vegetarian that did not prey on other animals. All the others have not survived. Which is the strongest? You have a garden. If you work with nature you get results. If you abuse nature, you don’t get results. Show love not only to your fellow beings, but to animals. Do not exploit people, do not exploit animals and do not exploit nature. Then you are helping not only the people of your world, but everything that exists to have that peace, orderliness and harmony that is the ultimate purpose of evolution, the law devised by the greatest power in the universe.

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Music of the Spheres Music plays a subtle part in the Divine Plan. Silver Birch gave a leading musician a foretaste of the delights awaiting him in the Beyond. What you can never appreciate is the service you render with the music you provide. Music, especially of the inspired kind which is natural for you to transmit to others, has a great healing, soothing, stimulating, uplifting quality. In its way that too can touch souls and make them realize there is a sublimity of life far greater than any of the things that the physical senses can perceive or comprehend. Whenever you play in future remember you are an instrument of a great purpose, helping to bring harmony, sympathy, stimulation, happiness and health to many others who cannot convey their thanks to you. You have the greatest treat due when you reach our world, because we have music of a quality and superiority you cannot now comprehend. We have octaves of sound that you have never heard in your world. We have symphonies, we have concertos, we have orchestras and we have the greatest music makers and masters in our world. You have only a few in yours. We have access not only to the great music makers, but they have evolved since coming to our world. There is greater music performed for those who are ready to appreciate it. Our halls of music are among the treasures of our life. You will hear octaves of sound that are incapable of being registered by any of your instruments. And of course the music that enriches your world has its source in our world. It is not created in your world. Musicians and composers are the mediums. It is a great privilege to be here. I very much want to tell you that your teachings are a wonderful inspiration in my life. Let us both thank the Great Spirit, I for the opportunity and privilege of service and you and your wife for being able to receive it. I came to your world many years ago, a lone figure without a friend.

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I was asked if I would return to your world under these difficult conditions, forfeiting whatever I had earned in higher reaches of life, because there was a great need for spiritual realities and powers to be established. I accepted the challenge. Here you are tonight telling me that the teachings which I am privileged to transmit -- they do not originate from me -- have helped you. I am grateful for that knowledge. It shows that I have added some more friends at whose hearths I can feel the warmth of their love, and that means a great deal to me. You will be given many opportunities to serve others as you have been served. Take them when you can. I am not asking you or anybody to become an evangelist, a missionary seeking to make converts whenever possible. We do not wish you, or any others associated with us, to play on the emotions of the masses, to arouse them with fervor to accept things which in the cold light of day for many of them will prove unreasonable. What we do say is that you will be provided with opportunities to help those who come into your orbit. Then do the best you can for them. There is a great work to be done in your world. Material possessions can only be your temporary belongings. You are merely their custodians. Those of a spiritual nature will not rust or tarnish; they will endure. There is no religion higher than service, which is the coin of the spirit. Those who serve others less fortunate than we are will find that the way will be shown. There will be brought to them people they can help in their time of crisis, just as you were guided when you needed it. *** Referring to discordant and technical modern music, a visitor asked if inspiration had changed its form. Inspiration does not change. Inspiration is constant, but it can be received only by those who are ready to do so, and they must be attuned to that wavelength on which it can operate. Inspiration is always at work. Like spirit power, it seeks to find avenues through which it can express itself. It is a question of attunement. You must recognize that in your world there are pioneers in all forms of art, in music and in painting. Sometimes they are so much in advance that the people of their time are unable to appreciate it. But with the years that pass, understanding comes, and recognition is afforded to the pioneers.

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That does not apply to the vulgarization of music that often takes place in your world. This is in line with the violence that is part of the cancerous growth infesting your world today. I wondered if the generation was affecting the music. You cannot divorce matter from spirit because each reacts and interacts so far as the other is concerned. Your body affects your spirit, and your spirit affects your body. They are not in watertight compartments. Mung says everything that happens on the inside must manifest itself on the outside. Is some of the modern, violent, tuneless music evidence of this? Is it not better out than in? Does it help to dissipate the violence? No, it is a natural reaction, unfortunately. It is an expression of the material, part of the selfishness, the complete unconcern for the welfare of others. It is greed at work. That explains the violence afflicting itself on your world. And that violence is expressed not only in physical behavior, but in music, art, and in every other form of life.

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Why Spirit Guides Return? Like many others, I was asked whether I would go back into the belt of matter to try to save those in your world who were trying to destroy themselves and the world in which they lived. We have tried to work amongst you, and we still try to work amongst you, seeking by your own standards to prove that those who leave your world still live in the fuller realms of the Great Spirit, so that you shall understand that you are part of the Great Spirit even as they are. Although we strive in these things, there are many who seem to think it is more important to worry about the toys than the message. What does it matter whether the message comes from one whom the world calls white, or black, or yellow, or red? What does it matter if the laws of the Great Spirit are given you by one who has had much education or not, so long as it is the Law, so long as it is the truth? Many years ago, you were taught that A little child shall lead them. Until you learn to put away the foolish wisdom of the wise, and get back to the simplicity of the child, you will not advance much either in your world or in mine. Your world makes a difference between those whose skins have been colored by the sun of the Great Spirit. They look at their skins and forget that their spirits are all one. Why do you think you have wars? Why do you think you have misery? Why do you think you have great sorrow in your world? Because those who are blinded by matter and can only see through its limitations do not see that behind the things of matter there is a unifying spirit of the Great Spirit. Because they seek to make differences, they have chaos, they have disaster, they have bankruptcy. You have sought to build your lives on the systems of your own material world. You have sought to become educated and cultured and have tried to build up a civilization away from the laws of the Great Spirit. Because of that, your world has fallen. It is in ruins, just as much in ruins as is the civilization of the olden days. Because we love you, because that love which comes from the Great Spirit flows through all of us, we come back to you to try to help you to pick up the pieces and build them on the structure of eternal things, the laws of the Great Spirit. Because when we lived on earth we had colored skins, you say to us: So, we refuse to have the world put right because your skin is colored. We would - 122 -

rather have disaster, unless we can be helped by people whose skins are white. But all the same, I want you to know that you help us. There is much in the things that you have discovered in your own civilization that helps us. It is a perfect law in its operation. We seek to teach you what we have learned in the realms of spirit, and we seek to imbibe whatever knowledge you can give us. It is through that law of co-operation that the new heaven will come into your world. One day in your world all the colors will merge, for all the colors have their part to play. All peoples will merge, because each has something to give to the world. You can see the time coming, if you look with the eyes of the spirit, when all will live together in harmony, giving all peoples the advantage of their own race, their own culture and their own learning. We are all servants of the Great Spirit - - you and I and those who work with us - - seeking to do His will. We are misunderstood; often our friends are our greatest enemies. But we do our work and, because we do that which is right in the sight of the Great Spirit, we call to our aid all those forces which belong to the spirit, which are stronger than your world of matter. And gradually good triumphs over evil, justice triumphs over injustice, and right triumphs over wrong. Sometimes the forces of your world push us back for a while, but not forever. We must succeed, for we seek to save mankind from himself, to point to him those higher and better ways which will enable him to live his life in service, so that he may receive the richness of soul, spirit and mind, the peace and the happiness which do not belong to the world of matter but to the higher and greater things of the spirit. It is a great task on which we are all engaged. It is a sacred tie that binds us all together and makes us one in spirit, one in purpose, one in desire. Let us resolve that together we will renew our opposition to all that which stands in the way of Truth’s advance, so that our combined efforts bring the power of the Great Spirit nearer to His children. If the few words I say are of service to you, then they should enable each one of you to go out into the world and serve the children of matter as I try to serve you. It is your responsibility to pass on the knowledge you have. I know that to be the Law. I only seek to interpret into your language the laws of the Great Spirit. Those who read my words will not always agree with my interpretation, but I am in a different world from them. I am sometimes limited by your language and by my - 123 -

instrument. If we fail to agree, then it is either because the souls in your world are not yet evolved to an understanding of greater truths, or because I cannot express all that is within my soul, which is greater than your earthly language allows me to interpret. But I am always ready to serve and to teach the Law, for it is only through an understanding of the laws of the Great Spirit that the people of the world of matter can live as the Great Spirit intended they should live. It is better to see than to be blind, it is better to hear than to be deaf, it is better to be awake than to be asleep. Let them open their souls to the Great Spirit. Let them strive to attune themselves to the laws of the Great Spirit, so that they are at one with Him and He is at one with them. Then their hearts and souls will be at peace, they will be in harmony with the great rhythm of the universe, and discord will disappear from their lives. They will begin to live as they have never lived before. All knowledge matters. It is not wise to say you will only receive this amount of knowledge and will go no further. I strive to transmit all I know so that you may drink in as much as I have to give you. I do this not because I am greater than you, not because I am proud of what I possess, but because only by giving can I serve. All knowledge has its place. Do not strive to stop at any rung in the ladder of progress. It is only by imbibing, by striving to get the complete picture, that life will be understood by you. That refers not only in life in its material aspects, but life in its spiritual aspects, too, for whilst your world of matter needs guidance in the things of matter it is also necessary for the knowledge of the spirit to be given at the same time. Our message always is that you are living now in the world of spirit, that the world of matter is but one reflection of an eternal life. If only those who know would be faithful to the knowledge, how much more could we accomplish? If only those who have listened to the voice of the spirit and those who have witnessed the operation of spiritual laws in the phenomena that links together the two worlds of life would forget Self and rise to the highest heights that they could scale, we could achieve a great deal. Knowledge and service are greater than individuals. What we have achieved is but little compared with what can be achieved. No limits can be set to the Great Infinite Spirit, to the wisdom, to the inspiration, to the truth that can be showered upon your world. There are no restrictions to the mighty

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power of spirit waiting to fill your world, when your instruments can provide the right channels for us to use.

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Why Were You Born? What is the reason for earthly life? Are we freak effects of natural causes? Or has a Master Architect designed a plan for His creation? Is there a blueprint for each one of us to seek out, unfold and build, be it falsely or truly? The object of all earthly existence is that the human spirit is to be quickened. Earthly life has a purpose for all who dwell on your planet. It is sad that there are millions who are unaware of the spiritual reality on which their lives are based. Like troglodytes they live in a spiritual gloom that is almost a vacuum. Their perspective is wrong; their focus is wrong; their vision is wrong. They have no idea of the vast richness that life has to offer them. Once you are aware of spiritual truths you are transformed because you know what it is you must achieve. We are all human beings. Thus we have the flaws of imperfection within us. If we were perfect, we would not be in your world or in ours. We would have joined the Great Spirit, the only perfect power in the universe. We recognize the frailties of human nature. But you must regard every problem as a challenge not only to be met and accepted, but to be overcome so that the indwelling spirit, as a result, is more fortified, grows, develops, unfolds, and you emerge stronger. It is not possible for you who dwell in earthly surroundings not to be confronted with heights and depths and the ups and downs of the varying circumstances which pertain to your world. It is why you are placed there so that you can, because of the variety of circumstance, enable your spirit, the eternal you, to be able to express latent qualities that can be manifested only when confronted with difficulty and adversity. It is not when the sun shines that the soul finds itself. It is not in a bed of roses that the soul comes into its own. It is in the hazards and challenges, the - 126 -

difficulties, the hurdles and the obstacles. These provide the only means by which the soul can realize its latent divinity. This is the story of every pilgrim on the road to spiritual knowledge. There has to be heartbreak, sorrow and suffering to appreciate fully the compensations that will follow. The individuals who will give service must be tried and tested, sometimes to their uttermost strength. There is a plan for every child of the Great Spirit. Everything operates according to natural law which knows nothing of miracles or necessity for intervention. The natural law is perfect because it is conceived by a perfect mind. There are no exceptions to the natural law, which makes provisions for all that exists, not only in the universe but even in the immeasurable cosmos. Wherever you look, the natural law operates. Nothing is too small to be ignored, and nothing too large to be outside the framework of how the natural law operates. And it operates for you, as it does for me and for everybody. So you know that action and reaction are equal and opposite. You know that you have to plumb the depths before you reach the heights. And you know that you have plumbed the depths, but have not reached the heights. That is why you have doubts about surviving. But you will survive. I do not mean permanently in your world, because immortality is not part of earthly existence. Everything material has a period placed on it when it must finish its task. It must dissolve, disintegrate and be resolved into the original constituents that made its existence possible. Your body will follow that pattern as part of a preordained course, but you will survive because you have no alternative, because surviving is part of the natural law. In some religions they teach that there is survival for those who believe in certain doctrines and creeds. But survival has nothing to do with religion or with human beliefs, aspirations and hopes. Survival is an inflexible law, automatic in its operation. You will survive because the spirit comes to earth to develop, to grow, to unfold and to prepare itself for its real home, not the transitory abode which earth provides. You will come home where you began, and continue to live after having left what earth has to offer, so that you can play your part in the great universal scheme.

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Every child of the Great Spirit has a part to play in the infinite scheme. There will be difficulties, but these are the challenges that have to be met, accepted and triumphed over. Handicaps and obstacles are all part of the necessary preparation for an evolving, developing spiritual nature. Yours is a very dense, material world where the vibrations are heavy, slow, sluggish, ponderous. The vibrations of the spirit are delicate, sensitive, subtle, and to be expressed there has to be a catalyst for the individual. You will not find spiritual truths when the sun is shining, if you are surrounded by riches, and wealth and possessions. You will not find spiritual truths when you have no problems. The catalyst will work only when you are in trouble. A storm can often do more to help you to unfold spiritually than the sun. It is in the fire that the steel is forged. It is in the crushing process that the gold is refined and purified to emerge in all its glistening color. And it is similarly for the human spirit to be tried and tested again and again, before it can emerge with a greater divinity being expressed then had happened before. The gold is there, but the ore has to be crushed before the purity of the metal can be made visible. The steel has to be forged in the crucible of fire. And so it is with all of you. You would not be interested in the things of the spirit, which are your eternal possessions, the only enduring and abiding realities, until you are ready to receive them. So you have to be tried and tested, just as the steel has to be tried and tested. You have to suffer. You have to endure privation, perhaps ill-health, some crisis that will touch your soul, that spark of the divine, and begin to fan it into a beauteous flame. There is no other way. It is only in the darkness that you will find the light, only in ignorance that you will gain knowledge. Life must be a polarity, or if you like a duality, in which it is said action and reaction are equal and opposite. The soul cannot come into its own until it is touched. This usually means when it seems to the individual there is no hope in this world, no light, no guidance to be found. The abyss of despair has been reached, the fear that he or she will be plunged into the depths and not recover. It is at that moment that the soul can be awakened. Thus we in our world have to wait patiently until your soul is ready. You say in your world that you may lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink. You have to be ready. - 128 -

I have had a longer experience than all of you. It gives me a greater appreciation of the perfection of the natural laws that encompass us all and ensure that provision is made for everyone. I am puzzled sometimes when I visit my friends on earth who have knowledge, and I see them worried and anxious. The knowledge is their foundation which should assure them that no harm or injury can befall their eternal spirit. Those with knowledge should be living in the light and never fear what the morrow will bring. There is nothing in your world that you need worry about. You have within you the armory of the spirit, the divine potential which you can utilize to help in any emergency or crisis that comes your way. There is no problem you cannot solve by calling on the power that is within you and by appealing to the power that is without you. THE END

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